


The Tulsa Queen

by AParisianShakespearean



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Banter, Bards, Enemies to Lovers, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Father-Daughter Relationship, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Modern Girl in Thedas, Rating May Change, Romance, Romantic Fluff, Seventies Girl in Thedas, Singing, Sixties and seventies songs, Slow Burn, Tags to update, idiots to lovers, pain in the ass to lovers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-18 05:13:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29112849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AParisianShakespearean/pseuds/AParisianShakespearean
Summary: Hippie, beatnik, singer, bard, cynic,  Laurel lands in Thedas and into the arms of the Commander of the Inquisition with a bevy of songs to sing for the new world. She finds she’s quite the hit as “Rhiannon,” at the Herald’s Rest, much to Maryden and that Cullen character’s chagrin, and quite a hit amongst the nobility in Thedas, with at least half a dozen marriage proposals following suit.And then an agreement leads to a dance, which leads to a kiss, and then a love song for the Commander of the Inquisition and his new wife.
Relationships: Blackwall/Female Inquisitor, Cullen Rutherford/Original Character(s), Cullen Rutherford/Original Female Character(s), female lavellan/blackwall
Comments: 14
Kudos: 51





	1. Stairway to Heaven

**Author's Note:**

> Here's my take on a modern girl in Thedas story, but instead of modern times, Laurel gets zapped into Thedas from 1978. I'm not sure what the reception was going to be but I thought I'd yeet this out there for the hell of it. Also, "Tulsa Queen" is a song by Emmylou Harris, and the title inspired the song. Please enjoy!

Laurel walked out on her mother and her protests about needing to stay till the bitter end as “Don’t Worry Baby” played.

Gran used to play the song for her all the time. She asked Laurel to play it once more on the record player before slipping the pearl bracelet, and heirloom from “somewhere down the line” on her left arm. “Go bunny,” Gran said after Laurel leaned down to embrace her. Gran had gotten feeble since last she saw her, yet the leukemia couldn’t take away her spark or fire. Part of Laurel wanted to stay till the end, play The Beach Boys and Frankie Valli and their other favorites when Laurel was little on a loop. Gran’s answer was firm. “I want you to have only the grandest adventures, Tulsa queen.”

She called Laurel “Tulsa Queen,” like that song that came out last year. Laurel remembered when the song first played on the radio and Gran called her to tell her about it. “It’s about you bunny,” she said, the two laughing over the phone before they knew about the leukemia. Whenever Gran called her that Laurel agreed, though she was really no queen nor princess or even grand adventurer—though damn she wanted that, be like that song Stevie Nicks sang about and just care about whatever place she was off to next, not finding home or a place to put down roots but a new adventure. Gran told her to have adventures, and she thought maybe New York was an idea. Again. It was a bust the first time, but that was when she met Michael, and he had a touch for ruining things. _Go back to Los Angeles first,_ she thought though, _get the money Michael owes you, play at Sam’s club and get those tips, then find a place to crash._

She stuck on her brown suede books and left at the front door, scoffing at herself. She probably wouldn’t do any of that and just stay in L.A. All this false bravado for nothing. And one of her favorite songs was playing too. She shouldn’t squander a listen to one of the best love songs that had ever been written. It still played as she walked out the door. It still played as her mother yelled at her and told her to come back.

“Gran doesn’t want me here,” Laurel said as Karen called her again, her voice a loud shrill. “I’m doing what she wanted. I’m going to an adventure.”

“So you’re just going to leave me here?”

Sighing, Laurel whipped around. Karen, also known as her mother, looked similar to her, though she was paler where Laurel inherited her father’s propensity for tanning well, and California managed to do just that. Their eyes were the same, round and brown like dirt and hair a soft black, though Laurel’s was long and like a “hippie’s,” always said in a derogatory way when Karen mentioned it. More times than one, Karen referred to Laurel and her “fellow,” as beatniks. Beatnik, hippie, wanderer…she was just Laurel. Dad named her because he thought the name was pretty, and after the war he didn’t see much pretty things. Maybe that’s why he eventually left. Fatherhood wasn’t pretty enough for him.

Dad left when Laurel was ten. Back to Italy she heard later, trying to find his relatives in Sicily. Karen chased after him, dropping Laurel at her grandmother’s house. Because of it Gran was more mother than Karen, and Laurel’s best friend. For her best friend, her inspiration and muse, Laurel would make her own adventure. She would go back Los Angeles first, and some place else later. She’d decide later. She would sing every night if she had to and write during the day. She’d do anything than stay with Karen.

“I’m sorry Mom,” Laurel said, and she wasn’t sure what hurt more, the fact that her mother didn’t ask her to stay, or the fact had been building up inside of her since Gran told her she didn’t want her to watch what would happen. Gran didn’t want her to stay, she wanted Karen. Laurel didn’t even look at the house as she drove off, not the forget-me-nots in the flower beds or the rocking chair Gran would rock in, holding Laurel and singing softly to her. As if by some macabre twist of fate—though not the strangest twist of fate that would happen that night—“Don’t Worry Baby” played on the radio as Laurel drove out of Tulsa. Radio stations didn’t usually play The Beach Boys, as they were too retro and schmaltzy with their songs about girls on the beach and boats. It was Fleetwood Mac, the Bee Gees and Queen usually in those days, though Laurel couldn’t complain. She liked it all. There was little she didn’t like when it came to music. You’re whole life is music, Gran would have said, and what good she would have done, what an honor to Gran, to heed what the Beach Boys said and not worry, baby.

She did worry. Tears streamed down her face down the lonely and dark highway, the beat up Chevy truck that had served her well in California traffic taking her down the roads and plains. When Laurel first got the news about Gran, Michael offered to come with her to Tulsa to see Gran, but she didn’t want to spend hours upon hours with him in the truck. Singing with him in clubs was one thing. Living with him was another as well, as they could ignore each other relatively well when they weren’t working or approaching club owners for opportunities. Yet to spend hours and hours as two islands with too different ways of thinking in a truck for hours on end was another, torturous matter entirely. Better to drive alone Laurel thought, even in the dark, than be trapped with Michael. Besides, Gran would have asked if Michael was her knight she always wanted. She’d rather have Gran think she was a solo woman than Michael’s fair lady.

She forgot what Michael said before she left though, about checking those tires. Not even halfway from Tulsa to Los Angeles, not even out of Oklahoma, she was driving down the highway, singing to “Dreams” to pass the time, when the car hitched and bumped and she had to ride it out gently, cursing when the car came to a complete stop. “Might need some air on the way to and back,” Michael said, and though she wanted to speed to Tulsa to see Gran, she did follow his advice on the way. Too angry at her mother’s protests and insistences that Laurel needed to stay, that it was her duty and she was failing her if she left, Laurel forgot about the tires.

Two cars zoomed past as she slammed the door to the chevy and got out to check. Laurel cursed as the first one passed and tried to run after the other, a Cadillac, but the helpless pleas of a poor woman too poor to have a spare tire in the backseat didn’t woo a speeding car. She threw her face into her hands and shrieked, straining her voice, but Laurel wasn’t one to throw herself into bouts of sadness in her normal life. Only when she sang did she wallow in sad things, because singing and writing made it easier. It hurt less when she sang, but it hurt enough. You must hurt sometimes in life bunny, Gran said, but Laurel had her own little tricks for such things.

No other cars zoomed by. Cutting her loses, thinking there had to be a store or a gas station somewhere soon, she took her wallet, stuffed it into her jean pocket, took her guitar case, and began to walk, with the wallet taken for obvious reasons, and the guitar taken because it was the most priceless thing Laurel owned. She tried not to think about the Zodiac Killer or other murderers as she walked, wondering what Karen would think if she ended up a missing person. No one really thought about missing people unless they knew someone missing, or perhaps if they were the missing person themselves. Laurel did her own disappearing trick when she left for Los Angeles, but not a very good one, as she did tell Gran where she was heading. But Gran was like her fairy godmother, her guardian angel, or more appropriately and what Gran reveled in being called, a witch.

Laurel smiled, recalling. Gran certainly had witchy ways, in fact Laurel called her the original Stevie Nicks. Her garden on Maple Avenue with forget me nots always bloomed when other gardens in the neighborhood wouldn’t, and she could crochet quicker than anyone else in those knitting and crochet parties Doris Weatherly down the street hosted. It was a skill passed to Laurel, though Laurel’s pace wasn’t as quick as her Gran’s. Perhaps not true in a real sense, in Thedas sense anyway, but it was Laurel’s truth about her grandmother, that she was a witch. It was why later in her life and far from home, Laurel would say her grandmother sent her away. Gran wanted her out. Gran had another sort of knight in mind for her.

It started as a simple vibration as Laurel walked. Her first thought was an earthquake. It felt like it at first, as in California they always started as a small rumble in the floor underneath your feet. But earthquakes didn’t come with green lights, and there was a green light in the distance, Laurel could see. Aliens, she thought with paranoia and fear. She just saw _Close Encounters of the Third Kind_ , and though Richard Dreyfuss may have accepted alien abduction, Laurel certainly wouldn’t have. The thought of being hauled into a flying saucer and shipped to the stars scared the living daylights of her. But wouldn’t alien spacecrafts be higher up? Would alien spacecrafts cause the ground to vibrate?

Her brain said get away, other parts of her, including that more adventurous part that Gran, the witch of Maple Avenue used to nurture, said don’t run. Even frightened as she was, something inside her, both Gran and herself, said go.

The strange green tear in the air…if that’s what she could call it as descriptions for the fantastical in the real world failed, and yet suddenly it was everywhere all at once, making her drop her guitar case (and that would later be her biggest regret—the fact she dropped her guitar case) as the ground rippled and sunk underneath her. It was both like being woken up after a long nap by having someone jerk you awake and like falling through quicksand, and it was green and eerie…her eyes were failing her. She rubbed them and yet everything was still green.

And then….

Then…

_Didn’t you dream of other places, other worlds?_

_Sure. This though isn’t what I had in mind._

She had a mind for simple, black and white worlds like the ones in older pictures, or more vibrant colorful worlds on stage. She saw a lot of productions in New York before she moved to Los Angeles, and when she was a kid the Tulsa theatre group did _Romeo and Juliet_. Gran took her to it. She saw it and she longed for a place where words were honey and butter, sweet and practiced and never mind that Romeo and Juliet died needlessly. Either that or the dream world in _The Wizard of Oz_ —Gran always made sure they watched it whenever it was on the television. She even read Lord of the Rings and thought to herself she was more suited for Middle Earth than Earth. Singing always gave her a glimpse into that world along with melancholy and things lost. This, falling through green, was something else entirely. It was not glimpses. It was submersion. A stairway to heaven.

_I must be dead._

Falling, falling. Glints of green as she walked through soup. She never thought of death much except in terms of inevitability. Her mother took her to church when she had it in her head to be a good person and a good mother, but the preaching never quite reached her ears the way it should have. It was blurred where she was and like a dream, but dreamlike she didn’t feel. She was solid, on the earth…the sun up, but shouldn’t it have been night? Did she black out? And then…

“Look out!”

There was clinking and yelling, shouting, arms around her. She was blanketed and pressed against something. Man was all she could think, and he was hard and soft edges with something vaguely furry against her nose. “Cover me!” he shouted to someone else near him—Laurel could feel the presence and noise of at least a couple people before her rescuer or capturer or someone asked, “Who are you?” keeping her leveled in his gloved hands as he half guided and half pushed her away, far away, as she almost tripped on her feet. If it weren’t for his arms guiding she would have fallen, and yet still she had no good look at him, no nothing. She was drunklike, a product of her travel and shifting, for she knew that was what happened. She shifted and came from away. She’s shifted through time, through places.

She should have never doubt her grandmother’s stories and tales.

He stopped her, and she saw the others before she saw him—an armored man with tattoos on his face and a woman with dark hair in a heavy armor. “Who are you?” she asked as she caught a better look at her man, her voice loud and clear.

“Who are you?” he barked back, still holding and gripping her. He reminded her of Robert Redford a bit except for the scar on his lips and fur around his neck, and he smelled of leather, metal and sweat. “You fell from the rift,” he said, almost shaking her, and she almost laughed, because she knew. She did fall.

“Away,” she said stupidly, and then…

Caught before she could fall again, her last thought before sweet blackness the thought that she certainly wasn't in Kansas anymore.

Or Tulsa.


	2. Send in the Clowns

Since the Inquisition formally began, Commander Cullen had a growing awareness that he was at the very least, acquaintances with many colorful people. The ambassador and spymaster of the Inquisition who both delighted and reveled in speaking with nobles and dignitaries, the Qunari warrior called the Iron Bull who asked him on a few occasions to hit him with a stick, a mage from Tevinter who he indulged in games of chess with, and the Inquisitor herself—once a hunter for her clan of Dalish elves. However, the oddly dressed, long-haired and perplexing woman who fell from the rift may have been the most colorful of all. That said something in itself, as since their meeting by the rift her time spent in the waking world was almost negligible.

“Did she fall from the rift though?” Rylen asked as they made camp, the woman unconscious on a bedroll by a fire they made near the woodlands. “Seemed to me like she was wandering around.”

Cullen could have sworn she fell through the rift like the demons all did, though no demon would have fallen into his arms. He clenched his fist when he recalled no, that wasn’t entirely true about some demons, but she had no aura magic or fire in her eyes common of some mages or demons. He was convinced she was human without a touch of magic. Yet she had an outline about her, a remnant from a place far away. He could think of no other way to explain it.

She wore blue colored breeches, a dark light blue color that hugged her curves and legs well, though he was careful not to look too long. She wore brown suede boots and had a pearl bracelet around her left arm, and a white tunic with buttons down the front, falling down her shoulders. Her hair was long and reached her back when she stood, though it spilled behind her on the bedroom and had a touch of wave, her skin a cool olive.

“We’ve had no luck with this mate,” Rylen said, pushing his unruly brown hair away from his face. “Been out for days and she’s all we can find, along with yet another rift. Maybe we should head back.”

He didn’t want to head back. Leliana’s reports indicated Samson had been sighted near Therinfal in the Bannorn, not far from South Reach either. He quarreled with the Inquisitor about it, told her the situation the Dales could wait while Samson could not. _He turns more by the day Inquisitor, he harms more and more innocent people by the day. If we do not intervene…_

 _Go yourself Commander,_ she snapped. _Clean up part of the mess you had a hand in making. Take your templar friends with you…_

“We need to be ready,” Lysette said, “The Wardens are still gathering at Adamant fortress.”

The templars, the Grey Wardens, Cullen knew it all too well. “I know. I—”

“Oh god…”

The oddly dressed woman roused, rubbing her forehead. Rylen next to him didn’t ready his sword, but Lysette held onto the pommel, ready to draw. We should tie her hands together Commander, Lysette said when they brought her back, in case she was indeed a mage or demon in human form. He’d seen demons in human forms before and knew she wasn’t one of them. He didn’t agree with Lysette, and unbound she remained. Rylen of course had to remind him he didn’t have the best record when it came to recognizing mages, as there was Hawke…

Her hair tumbling past her back, she rose from the bedroll, blinking and startled. She looked from Cullen to Rylen to Lysette, her earthy gaze darting, nose scrunched.

Her first question, like all the ones that followed, made little sense. “What the hell are you all wearing?” she asked. “Is this…am I at a renaissance festival?”

“Festival?” Rylen scoffed. “Do we look as actors look to you?”

“You look like you’re all filming a movie or something.”

“Filming,” and “moovee,” terms he never heard. She spoke in riddles, her accent not Fereldan or Orlesian. He asked where she came from once more. Once again, she said what she said by the rift,

“Away.”

He remembered the report from Redcliffe, and what Dorian told him as well as they played chess in the garden. The rifts near Redcliffe tore him and the Inquisitor through time and place. Perhaps something similar happened to her.

“Did you fall from the rift?” Rylen asked.

“Are you a mage?” Lysette too asked a moment later.

“One thing at a time,” she said, still scrunching her nose and looking around. She said the clearing they were in looked like she was in “the sound of music,” but he had no clue how on earth music could have a look, and when Lysette asked again if she was a mage, she raised her eyebrows at her.

“Like a wizard? Uh, no. Not that I’m aware of—”

“Don’t be coy, witch.”

Lysette rose, pointing her blade at the woman’s throat. She had courage, Cullen would give her that much. She didn’t so much as flinch, but look curiously at the blade, sticking her finger at the tip and prodding. “Ow,” she said, noting the sharpness.

Rising, Cullen put his hand on Lysette’s shoulder, urging her to step aside. “Did you come from the rift?” Cullen asked again, leading Lysette away. “Please. Try to remember. We don’t know everything these rifts can do—”

“What’s a rift?”

“You don’t know?”

She narrowed her eyes. “No.”

Sighing, he extended his hand. As curiously as she glanced at the sword pointed toward her throat, she looked at his gloved hand.

“I will not bite,” he said. “I do not sting.”

With a strange narrowing of the eye she took his hand, and he helped her rise. Curiously she held onto it after she got onto her feet, raising her eyebrows at him. Her hand still in his he felt a bead of sweat at the base of his neck. He lived an uncomfortable life under her gaze. Perhaps she was a mage.

“You look like a Shakespearean actor,” she said.

He knew what an actor was, at least, the other word was a strange riddle, perhaps because in truth, he didn’t see much art.

He cleared his throat. “My name is Cullen. I’m the Commander of the Inquisition. We were in the area scouting for red templars—templars that have been corrupted. This is Lysette, and this is Rylen.” He motioned to each. “Please Miss, tell me your name and where you’re from.”

“Laurel. From Tulsa. And…where are we, exactly?”

“Near South Reach Ferelden. Here, let me—”

Rylen gave him an eye as he led her to the rift, evidently noticing his hand hadn’t unclasped from the woman’s since he offered it. He and Lysette trotted behind Cullen, no doubt sharing a look as he took her near enough the rift. “Mark the location on your map,” Cullen told Rylen as they traveled. “We must tell the Inquisitor—”

“I’m sorry but what? Inquisition? Like the Spanish Inquisition? And why are you dressed in costumes?”

“This isn’t a costume,” Cullen said, indignant. “It’s—”

“Oh my god!”

She had the same reaction to the rift as he did when he first saw it those months ago, demon upon demon falling from the tear before the Inquisitor closed it with the mark on her hand. Finally letting go of his hand, the woman, Laurel, covered her mouth, gaping and screeching and twisting her long hair. “Uh, oh…” She looked around again at all three of them with her wide brown eyes, all too bewildered to act or even move. She called them actors and yet she was the liveliest one, animated with her expressions and fidgeting.

“Where’s this…Tulsa?” Rylen asked, the woman continuing to fidget. “Surely across the sea news would have traveled…”

“I…I…” She gulped. “Gran, Gran…this is not what you had in mind…this can’t be happening…”

“Who?” Cullen put his hands on her shoulders. “Miss?”

She jerked away. “Don’t touch me!”

“I am sorry, but—"

“Shit.”

She bolted, a quick jog at first but a gradual run, heading off past the clearing. Cullen called for her, asked her to wait. They could help her if she needed it, help her find who she had been traveling with, or at least find her a route to Gwaren where she could take ship across the sea to Tulsa or wherever it was she said.

“You can’t let her run,” Lysette advised. “She may bring reinforcements.”

“She could also find a very angry bear,” Rylen said, crossing his arms. “I wouldn’t let her run either.”

He wasn’t the one that run. The honor fell to the Commander. It wouldn’t be the last time either.

* * *

Helter skelter of a green light like it was damn Great Gatsby, sinking and running, mayhem, Shakespearean actors, a British man and two others with what sounded like a French and Scottish accent…maybe, speaking to her as if they were in the middle of a too real game of Dungeons and Dragons.

She was predisposed to believing in magic thanks to Gran. First she thought she fell through to another world, and when she was unconscious she must have convinced herself she wasn’t. Stories were fun and games when her grandmother spoke of uprooting herself from her normal life to be a knight and shining armor in another place. But actually shifting to another place…

Maybe she was hit by a car, maybe she hit her head…so many maybes and yet the feeling of needing to pee seemed pretty real, something she noticed when she first jolted awake and the blonde Englishman peered at her. Surely if she was dead or unconscious in an extended dream she wouldn’t feel like she needed to pee. The ground was also solid under her as she continued to run, her staggered breaths, sweat, and erratic heartbeat real as well. Gran always said there was nothing wrong with running sometimes, sometimes you would have to choose to run if no one else chose for you. She ran, thinking it would wake her up.

She was still dreaming. Or, perhaps…

_This is real._

“Miss!”

It was that Englishman again, Cullen she remembered him introducing himself as. Huffing and puffing and heaving, Laurel paused to take a breath, the man coming to meet her. “How…how can you run in that?” she asked, regarding his ensemble in full, from bottom to top. His boots with buckles at the top made no sense, nor did the steel on his arms with some sort of sword symbol engraved. The fur however truly was the most puzzling. It was big and bulky and surely made running taxing.

“Why did you run?” he asked, his cheeks and nose red but otherwise looking better than Laurel must have.

“Because I don’t know where I am,” she said, still catching her breath, managing to stand to her full height. Laurel was relatively tall all things considered, a good five foot seven that her boots exaggerated when she sang. She fit directly under this man’s nose. He didn’t loom over her, but he took up space. She found herself trying to take up just as much.

“Ferelden,” he said, not realizing to her ears it sounded a made up word as he accused her of making. “You must have fallen through the rift. There is no other explanation. If you come with us, there is someone at our fortress who may be able to help you. Please tell me what is the last thing you remember?”

“Walking with my guitar. My car broke down—”

“Your what?”

They were speaking the same language and yet at the same time they were speaking different languages. Laurel mimicked a car as best she could, but her man didn’t understand. “It’s like a horse that has wheels and goes fast and is made of metal,” she settled on, recalling she saw a few horses near the clearing where she originally woke up.

“Why do you speak in riddles?”

“Because I’m not from here,” Laurel said, trying to figure out where _where_ was in relation to him. Maybe she experienced time travel. But wasn’t the first rule of time travel the fact that you traveled through time, and not through space? Wasn’t that what happened in _The Time Machine_? Oklahoma didn’t go through a period where Shakespearean like actors in armor roamed the land, and the green rifts, like the one she saw near Tulsa…

She ruled out time travel. It couldn’t have been Renaissance England either, everyone was speaking normally and not all Shakespearean like, and there was no place in England called Ferelden as far as she knew.

“This is another world,” she said, looking around, unable to believe it, but believing it because it was what Gran would have wanted. “Holy shit. This is…”

“You should come with us.”

Such an authoritarian. “Your friend pointed a sword at me,” she said. “Why should I come with you?”

“If you’d rather be elsewhere I will not demand you come with us,” he replied, mustering reason. “But you seem in distress…”

“Distress? Me? No, no! I’m just a girl who was leaving Tulsa back to Los Angeles because I have nowhere else to go…and I end up in some backwater with three clowns who—”

“Ferelden is not a backwater.” He pointed a finger at her. “And I not a clown.”

“I don’t know who dressed you but—”

It all happened fast. “Ambushed!” Cullen said, grabbing Laurel, tugging her and urging her to move. “Run,” he said, Laurel not daring to look behind her. “Run and get Rylen and Lysette. I’ll hold them.”

He drew his sword from his scabbard strapped at his hip and yet Laurel couldn’t obey. Whatever response of flight she had earlier dissipated. She was bereft and alone with a man dressed like a clown. “If you don’t run I’ll pick you up myself,” he said, tugging on her arm. “You wouldn’t dare!” she retorted, and he grabbed her and tried to shove her aside, turning her around. Not one or two, but three angry looking helmed men were charging at them, red crystals growing from their bodies like sprouts on a potato left in the sun. Laurel shrieked and screamed, demanded “pick me up, pick me up!” On instinct he obeyed, and he hauled her out with not as much speed as she would have liked, the angry men chasing them and her ass bouncing as he picked her up like she was a sack of potatoes. They ran, or more appropriately, he ran, dropping her onto the ground and forcing her to scramble when they made it back to the camp from earlier. His two friends there and bewildered, drawing their swords, Laurel cowered and shrieked and covered her head. It was all clanks and shattering, grunts, and please please please God, she said, don’t let him get stabbed, I think he’s my only chance….

And just as suddenly as it began, it ended. “That was Carroll,” she heard Cullen say, grunting and groaning, but alive. Laurel chanced to peep her eyes open. He sheathed his sword back, wiping sweat from his forehead.

“Carroll?” the woman, Lysette asked, similarly disheveled. “Who was Carroll?”

“I knew him at Kinloch. I asked Leliana with help finding him. I—I didn’t…”

“It’s alright mate.”

As the other man, Rylen, clapped Cullen on the back, Laurel blubbered and smoothed her hair back and asked who those people were, trying not to look at the bodies. “Red Tempalrs,” Cullen said, and though he may have mentioned them earlier, he still may as well have been speaking Greek.

One thing however was abundantly clear.

“Now you want to come with us?” Cullen asked, an I told you so there as well. “You were so adamant not to before.”

She crossed her arms. “Do I have a choice?”

“You always have a choice.”

She stood, walking from the camp and drawing out the moment, only to look back to see where the others were. All stared at her, these three Shakespearean actors in armor.

She found Cullen’s eyes, crossing her arms. “I choose you.”

As she tried to read his expression, somewhere between annoyance and perhaps relief, she wondered if anyone had ever chosen him before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dungeons and Dragons was created in 1974, so plausibly Laurel could have played it, lol.


	3. Over the Rainbow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all, thanks for reading! Just wanted to say that there *will* be smut in the future so the rating will likely change. However, smutty chapters will be noted. (We are a long way though, lol.) And Happy Valentine's Day!

The woman rode with Cullen to Skyhold. Lysette would not have her and Rylen claimed his mare was too stubborn. With that and an apologetic shrug, she deemed Cullen would have to do as her escort.

“The honor is mine,” Cullen said with biting sincerity, newly dubbed as the one that would "have to do." In reply, the woman batted her eyelashes and thanked him. Something struck him as familiar—something in the shape of her eyes perhaps, but he swore he saw no one else like her in his life.

She fell through a rift. Soon after it didn’t become the strangest thing about her. Everything she said was a piece of a puzzle, she a conglomeration of a larger picture where none of the smallest pieces fit. Before they set off, he kneeled and offered his hand for her to step in next to his mare, Buttercup, but she announced she had “something to take care of,” something Cullen could only guess. She came back an eternity later and deemed the experience “harder than she thought,” but at least it was done. He grimaced when she stepped into his hand, climbing his horse, and they set off back to Skyhold. A myriad of questions commenced.

What is this place again? She asked, and Cullen answered. How many countries are there here? Too, Cullen answered, mentally counting beforehand. Ferelden, Orlais, Nevarra, all the rest. On and on it went. Thedas, what’s Thedas? Can I see a map? What are templars again, and what’s the Inquisition? Wait, you have magic? What kinds of magic?

He couldn’t see her face as she asked, her back pressed against his front as it was. The first time he was this close with a woman, the first time he had one in his arms in a year, and she ran away from him beforehand.

“Magic is dangerous,” Cullen said when she began asking about it, the subject piquing her interest. “Those with it must learn how to wield it nor harm others.”

“Wild,” she said, sounding far away as they dismounted to rest their horses, still a few miles from Skyhold. “I wonder if I’m a witch, if I could cast spells.”

“It’s innate. Try it out.”

At Rylen’s ludicrous suggestion, one that made Cullen glare at him, the woman closed her eyes tight. Just as Cullen recoiled, preparing just in case, nothing came forth from her waving her hand. Nothing still as Rylen showed her how mages without staffs typically manifested their magic.

“Well shit,” the woman cursed. “I guess I could try again later though.”

“You will not. It won’t work.”

“How would you know?”

“Because I was once a templar,” Cullen said through gritted teeth. “You don’t have the aura.”

“Did Hawke have the aura?”

“Whose Hawke?”

For the second time, Cullen glared at Rylen. The woman's question went unanswered, much to her annoyance as they remounted their horses. Nearing the mountains, Rylen asked what Cullen wondered as well, if there was a different sort of magic where she came from. Taking a moment to reply she eventually said yes, though the magic of her land was much different. Or so she supposed.

“Different how?” Cullen found himself asking, hoping he wouldn’t regret it.

Though it was hard to see with her pressed against him, her hands made a small box. “We have screens both big and small where behind them, people act in plays. Though we call them movees and teevee shows.”

“Small people trapped behind a screen? It sounds barbaric.” Perhaps she was from the Imperium. According to Dorian the magic there was far more advanced than anything in Ferelden or Orlais.

“It’s not. It’s recorded.”

Another riddle. “What?”

“Think of it like a play you can watch any time. You do have theatre here, right?”

“Actors travel and perform in shows. There are theatres in the bigger cities.”

“Ah. Okay, alright. Well, like that,” she said. “Only on a screen. Some are big and they are called movee theatres. The small ones are called teevees.”

He sighed deeply, frankly too concerned with the ongoing war to even consider or fathom what sort of magic existed in places outside of what he knew. He tried to recall the few things Dorian told him, though nothing he described sounded anything like what the strange woman described as a “movee.”

“Shit,” the woman muttered to herself, a word Cullen assumed was one of her favorites. She was most foul-mouthed, though perhaps he couldn’t blame her considering how they met. “This whole thing is just like that one Mark Twain book…”

Another strange name. Against his better judgement, he asked who it was.

“Mark Twain,” she replied. “He’s a famous writer and has this one novel about an American ending up in medieval times. It’s called _A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court_ , and…”

She turned to him, trailing off. “I’ve confused you,” she said at his furrowed brows. “I’m sorry.”

Rylen, riding by his side, raised his eyebrows. Do you think she’s dangerous? He asked him earlier before they left as the woman relieved herself. Cullen thought on it and was admittedly still thinking on it. He knew madness. He saw it in Uldred and he saw it in Meredith. This woman, younger than him though not as youthful as Sera, did not have what they had in her eyes. She was only frightened at some points, and at others, full of wonder.

Thrust from wherever or whatever she came from, the wonder struck Cullen as oddest of all. At times when the horizon brought forth a new sight, a rolling hill or meadow with wildflowers, the woman had the delight of a wandering child. She gasped at each new sight and each new hill, asking to stop at a meadow dotted with yellow flowers, though Cullen refused. She pouted and crossed her arms, but her moodiness dissipated as they traveled the mountain paths, snow on the horizon. Since arriving home from Kirkwall he was inundated with nothing but chaos, thrown a bevy of tasks that piled up by the day. He really shouldn’t have even tried to find Samson, but his officer Castelli’s reports were too pressing to ignore. All for naught. They didn’t find Samson, but a woman from the rift in oddly colored breeches and endless questions. Destruction would be at his feet if he did not succeed. How could he ever stop and breathe knowing that?

Yet his riding mate’s periodic gasps reminded him Ferelden wasn’t just merely a place he lived once and was living in again after so long. She reminded him it was a beautiful home, much more so than Kirkwall. For ten years his views were the statues of hopeless, broken men at the gallows, the dry and brown beach of the Wounded Coast, and finally, a city in rubble and ruin. Ferelden was emerald green and lush, recovering from the Blight and healing. It survived.

“Is where you come from like this?” Cullen found himself asking her as they approached Skyhold. As she had been on the road, she gasped when she saw the fortress. The air chilled as well, and as she wore a thin tunic, he offered her his mantle.

“Perhaps,” she said against him, wrapping his mantle more tightly around her shoulders. He wished he could see her face. “It’s…well. Lots of buildings and paved roads, and mechanical horses. I guess you could call them that anyway.”

Cullen tried to imagine a mechanical horse, though his mind wasn’t as imaginative as Varric’s. He didn’t imagine long at any rate, as she asked another question of her own.

“So who was that man earlier?” she asked. “The one that you…battled against?”

He clenched his horse’s reins tightly. “I knew him once, that’s all.”

“Why was he attacking you?”

He clenched harder. “He was corrupted by red lyrium.”

“What’s red lyrium?”

“A form of lyrium.”

She peered at him, blinking and brows knotting in irritation. “I don’t know what lyrium is.”

“It is a source of power,” he explained with more patience than he thought he would have. “Mages use it and templars use it.”

“Sorry, I’m still trying to get this straight. Templars guard the mages, right?”

“They should,” Lysette scoffed next to them. “The chantry lost control of the mages and templars. They argue over a new Divine while—”

“You’re going to have to stop right now,” the woman said, rubbing her forehead. “All this is so new. I’m still getting used to the idea of magic and templars and breaches in the sky pulling demons and monsters from it. Going to have to research or something.”

“Research,” Rylen said, dazed. “Imagine that.”

“Yeah. Research. That would be good. Shit I still can’t believe this…”

“You’re accepting this rather well. All things considered lass.”

She answered Rylen’s observation with a long sigh. “What choice do I have?” she asked. “This clearly isn’t a dream. I peed well enough and—”

“Miss,” Cullen interjected, “May you please—”

“So formal,” she said, and Maker he noticed how she seemed to press her back against him. “I’m not sure how well I’m going to blend in here.”

“If any luck, that Tevitnter Magister can send you straight back.”

Cullen would have corrected Lysette, told her Dorian was a mage from Tevinter rather than a magister, but the woman snorted and interrupted. “What if I don’t want to go back? What if I like it here?”

“Don’t you have a family?”

She angled her head toward Cullen. “Do you?”

“I…” He didn’t expect such a question. “I’m married to my work. But you didn’t answer my question.”

“Not anymore.”

He asked what she meant. “My grandmother who I love was on her death bed and told me to have adventures. My mom left when I was a kid and tried to guilt me into staying in Tulsa instead of leaving. My dad hasn’t been around since I was thirteen. He disappeared in Sicily and probably found a nice Italian woman. I don’t know he never bothered to write. Didn’t even grant mom that divorce. I had a fella but I realized he was a dipshit. What matters is the people important to me are gone. Home or not I’m a woman of her own means.”

“Oh.” His cheeks reddened and he offered his misplaced, inadequate apologies. And he was sorry. He knew too well what it was like being alone.

“It’s nothing. It…”

“Well, what do you do?” Rylen asked before things could get too awkward, but unfortunately for Cullen he already wanted to fall into a lake of fire.

“Oh,” she said, in her deep honey voice. “I’m a singer.”

A singer. A bard.

Well. What luck.

Whatever terms of endearment he could have sung for her frankly endearing wonder all deflated. A singer and a bard. Cullen groaned, and he must have picked up a thing or two from Cassandra, as the groan was louder than he thought.

“What’s wrong with being a singer?” she asked, indignant and picking up his displeasure.

“I know your tricks is all."

“Tricks? I have a lower register, but…”

She prattled on, about singing at places far from here and being well regarded. Yes indeed, “well regarded.” He knew the type. Since the formal declaration of the Inquisition there had been one bard in particular who vexed him, though he and Leliana managed to be civil to one another when they needed to be. Simply put she didn’t trust him, and though he couldn’t completely blame her, he couldn’t see the recruited mages simply walk around Skyhold without some form of protection. More vexing however was the Inquisitor’s more blatant trust in Leliana and her spies and bards. Information gatherers, Leliana said of them. You’d be surprised what secrets people tell when the wine and songs pour. Still, Cullen had an air of disquiet about it all, this gathering of secrets. He didn’t believe in secrets or exploiting them. The men and women under his command helped others without reservation. They didn't hoard information on an as needed basis to use it later for devious purposes. Cullen wished the Inquisitor knew that.

“Well,” the woman, Laurel began as they dismounted for the final time before they made it to Skyhold. That was the other thing. When Skyhold appeared before them she called it a castle rather than a fortress. Only a bard would see a fortress and think it a castle. “You have something against artists I imagine.”

He scoffed, crossing his arms as she observed him. One of his senior officers, Castelli, tried advocating a play in the barracks. “Something to keep their mind off,” he said. “Perhaps when things have quieted,” Cullen suggested, knowing he’d discard the idea if Castelli mentioned it again. Once he used to play games of pretend. Once he even liked when Rosalie played the apostate and he the brave templar knight who defended against demons. Reality wasn’t as fun. In reality, he wasn’t such a brave knight.

Cullen knew the horrors of war. He wouldn’t allow his men to play and and think it glorious—not when he knew the truth. He wouldn’t listen to songs that sung of the glories. Songs never expressed the sorrow he knew to be true.

“Art is important. Songs are important,” the woman said as he brought her down to the ground before they crossed the bridge to Skyhold. "They are. Truly."

"How? Has a song saved someone's life?"

"I--"

He caught her. "Indeed. What sorts of important work do you do bard? I would love to know.”

“Make people happy.”

She had her hands on her hips. So much conviction, so much belief. Cullen had beliefs too—to make the world safe.

“A noble goal,” he at least said. “But we keep them alive.”

“And we make that being alive all the happier."

He couldn’t answer that, and she smirked to herself, taking the victory. He’d see how long she’d have that smirk and have her victory.

* * *

Skyhold wasn’t a castle, but a fortress. Or that’s what Cullen said with much disdain when Laurel called it a castle. He told her to wait at the front while he got someone, someone evidently important.

“One thing though,” she said, handing him back his furred coat. He thanked her at least, throwing it back on his shoulders, but reminded her once again, stay. It was so warm around the fortress, different from the brisk chill outside it. It shouldn't have been possible, yet that was a running theme for Laurel's whole day already.

“Running off could have gotten you killed last time,” the Commander scolded. “Skyhold is far safer, but…”

“Ah. You just don’t want to have to chase after me.”

“I’ve done enough chasing for a lifetime," he said, sighing. "I’d rather not if I don't have to.”

“You should tell me about it something.”

“Another time perhaps.”

He was curt as he left, as was Lysette, who offered a passing glance before heading up the long and dramatic stone steps to the second level of the fortress. Two sourpusses, though she found the Commander, Cullen, the sourest of all. And at first he was such a knight in shining and furred armor. Everything changed when she said she was a singer.

Rylen, who remained behind longer than Lysette and Cullen, was far friendlier. He called her “real funny.” He hadn’t seen Cullen like that in ages.

“Hardly anything gets to him,” he said. “You did though. Good on you.”

“Thanks, I suppose.” Laurel wasn’t sure why she even goaded him like that and felt deflated when he expressed disdain for what she did. It wasn’t as though she came across many soldiers who deemed art as vital. It was a type she ignored. They hardly listened to her sing as it was. It wasn’t all of course, some soldiers valued art and her songs. There were stories of plays being put on in times of rest at camps. Her father told stories of he and his own “band of brothers” putting on Shakespeare’s Henry V and other scenes from other works in moments of quiet in the French countryside during the war. Those moments he said, kept him alive.

And yet, there was Cullen.

“But I do have to ask,” she said to Rylen, something which wasn’t completely true. She didn’t have to. “What does he have against singers and bards?”

“Oh, His heart got broken by one, that’s all.”

Typical men, even elsewhere. “Can’t you tell him we’re not all the same?”

“A jest lass.” Rylen chuckled, Laurel blinking. “He just doesn’t trust you lot. It’s nothing personal. I promise. Even when I first met him he preferred quiet over singing. However…”

Trialing off, he came over and whispered a name in her ear, Leliana. “Who’s Leliana?” Laurel asked, too loud as Rylen pressed a finger to his lips to shush her, calling her the Inquisition’s spymaster.

“She is also a bard,” he said. “They have trouble seeing eye to eye. Cullen he—well. He’s had trouble with mages before, and the Sister is far laxer…”

Laurel sighed. “You’re still speaking gibberish.” As far as she was concerned she heard “Inquisition” and thought of the Spanish one. This one seemed marginally better in the sense that it concerned itself with restoring order, whatever that meant for this world she found herself in. Rylen though didn’t know what “gibberish” was, so she translated it to “nonsense.” He laughed and assured her she would understand someday, but perhaps if she was leaving she wouldn’t need to worry. Laurel had less optimism that she wouldn’t be able to get back, yet with everything else…

Hours into her adventure and romp around what she gathered as a pseudo medieval and fantasy land called “Thedas,” she wasn’t necessarily having the best of times. When she was a girl and dreamed of faraway places her mind usually hailed herself as a princess of the land, her father not truly a veteran from the war but a king. Yet since landing through Gatsby’s green light or what they were calling it, a rift, (and apparently there were more like it elsewhere, and the Commander assumed somehow Laurel could make it back home through another) Laurel played no mind games with herself. Nor did she have a moment where she tried to convince herself she wasn’t dreaming. Peeing would have ceased all doubts anyway, but she understood she could spend her time grumbling and trying to wake up or she could try to get used to her surroundings. Or, maybe she got hit by a car and died. The thought didn’t distress her nearly as it could have, mostly because she assumed one wouldn’t need to pee anymore in heaven or even hell. The worst part about that was she bereft of her guitar.

No. She wouldn’t try to play mind games. She had to accept. She had to live. It was what Gran would have wanted.

“Best stay put here until Cullen comes back lass,” Rylen said. “Wouldn’t want to make him angry…”

Biding her a good day and good luck, Rylen headed right, toward what looked to Laurel like stables for the horses. Left to her own devices, she peered around. The place was damn huge, like some King Arthur’s Camelot sort of place. Stupidly she wanted to sing to herself, though she didn’t have the soprano necessary for Guinevere in _Camelot._ Maybe instead of singing she’d find Excalibur. Maybe instead of some female Arthur she was Morgan le Fay. Maybe she’d run into another American in Thedas who had Excalibur. Maybe Cullen would never come back because he was searching for Excalibur and she’d wither and die.

It started innocently enough. A woman scurried by, a woman with pointed ears like Tolkein described them in his books, and Laurel was so caught up at the fact she was staring at an actual elf that the woman mistook her for an idle, bored girl when there was work to be done. The elf eyed her “curious dress,” before berating her and leading her into one of the side rooms of the fortress, and she had such an incessant demeanor about her that Laurel could do nothing but follow her.

She followed her to the infirmary, or so Laurel gathered it to be, the elf woman handing her witchy looking vials and asking Laurel to administer them around to the various men and women in cots. Down Laurel went, the infirmary a long passage with cots lining the wall, men and women resting or sitting in various bandages across various limbs. Dutifully Laurel handed out the potion-like vials like candy, observing each face. There were men and a few women, more elves as well, some with eye colors more vibrant than she had ever seen back where she was from. As she administered the vials Laurel got a whiff of the smell. It was strong and herbal and reminded Laurel of something else entirely, something meant for smoking rather than drinking. Once she ran out however, handing her last vial to a ginger man—another elf she tried whose ears she tried not to stare at, he grabbed her hand.

Dumbly, Laurel stared at where his slender fingers grabbed her wrist. “Uh—”

“I’m sorry.” He let go, face creeping with a pink blush. “Who are you, da’len? I’ve never seen you before.”

She had never heard darling spoken in such a strange way. “I’m Laurel,” she answered, clearing her throat. “I…well, I’m not supposed to be here, but the woman thought I looked too bored or something like that…”

He chuckled, resting against his cot. He wore no shirt, a long bandage around his chest. “Well, what do you do?” he asked. “I’ve never seen you in here before.”

Laurel said the easiest thing she could. She was a singer.

“A singer?”

His glee was contagious. “Well, I lost my guitar. But a writer is still a writer without their pen. And I still have my voice.” Hopefully. Hopefully all the screaming she had been doing didn’t strain her vocal chords.

“Sing for me?”

She blinked. This place must have had it’s own bevy of songs, if indeed there were singers and bards. “Bard” must have had a different connotation here than it did in her…dimension. Gran in her English classes used to refer to Shakespeare as merely “the bard.” “The bard” as in the actor, artist, and writer. Laurel wasn’t even halfway there, even if she wanted to be. Yet the Commander called her a bard. He was derogatory in his tone, but it still mattered.

For this man that asked, Laurel wanted to sing. Yet she knew none of the songs perhaps he would have liked. She wanted to learn them.

He read her dilemma. It was an idiosyncrasy of hers, her face read everything she thought. Most of the time it got her into trouble. The wounded man in front of her, tired and wanting a song…and dear God she couldn’t imagine what it was like not owning a record player, not having music whenever she wanted…

But, she supposed if she was born into a world that didn’t have accessible music she wouldn’t miss it. The people here must have learned to appreciate a song when they heard one. “Any song will do,” he said, adding “only if you want,” and Laurel didn’t have to search long for a song. She sang.

_“Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high, there's a land that I heard of once in a lullaby…”_

It wasn’t a proper stage, but Gran told her to make her stage wherever she was. Her voice echoed off the walls in a soft contralto not unlike Judy Garland who first sang that song in a barnyard in Kansas that was really a Hollywood soundstage. Gran used to sing the song to Laurel too, like she did right after they found out Judy passed on the news, finally able to fly over the rainbow like happy little bluebirds. Laurel’s first hero, Judy and Dorothy. She supposed she was her own Dorothy. Maybe Cullen was the cowardly lion.

Maybe some people were bluebirds, who could fly over the rainbow. Maybe Laurel was one of them.

She dreamed when she sang, saw Gran and her little girl self in her garden of forget me nots. Why oh why can’t I, Laurel finished, opening her eyes from her trance. Singing was her escape, melodies her own personal version of a rainbow. The man who asked her to sing, whose name she didn’t get, looked on at her longingly in that same sort of world where the bluebirds were. That was what music could do. That was why she loved it.

“What’s your name?” Laurel asked, and he said it was Tamlin. “A good name,” Laurel praised. A good name for a kind man.

“My lady, what’s your name?”

“Laurel.”

He called her song the most beautiful he ever heard. “Who’s is it?” he asked sweetly. “I’ve never heard it.”

“Judy Garland’s,” Laurel said automatically, though she didn’t write the song it was intrinsic to her. “It’s from where I come from, I suppose.”

“I… hope my wife is there.”

She took his hand, squeezed. She told the man she hoped too hoped his wife was there, over the rainbow. She told the man she hoped her grandmother was there too. Hope she’s getting a laugh at least, Laurel thought, as whatever thrills she had earlier traveling replaced with heavy regret and sorrow. From what the Commander and the others told her, she landed in the middle of a great war. But what sort of war did she land herself in? What sort of place was this anyway, this Thedas? What were their stories and songs, what were their people like?

Vietnam ended not too long ago. Long years of protests and endless bits of news of yet another death. Graham who lived in Gran’s neighborhood, Susan’s son. James, her college friend from her English classes. He left to enlist, wasn’t even called and he died anyway. And those that made it back like Michael were haunted. Dad’s war was before that, the war that was supposed to end all wars.  
Funny how war was so intrinsic to people, no matter where they where.

She was right in the center of it now. She couldn’t pretend to understand Vietnam. This? Some man tried to make himself a god?

Well. Maybe that was easier to understand than whatever the hell kept the government sending boys to Vietnam.

The opponent wasn’t as important as the people fighting against him—Confucius or whatever his name was. Tamlin was one face in the sea. She moved him with her words and her voice.

She wanted to know more.

“You!”

Gasping, she let go of Tamlin’s hand. She knew that voice. She wasn’t sure if she was annoyed or pleased when his hard steps echoed through the walls, heading straight to where she was. She braced herself before she turned to face him, trying to settle him down from his understated temper tantrum. “I didn’t go far,” she countered, flashing him a grin. His hair had gotten messier since last she saw him, his nose and cheeks red. “The woman over there thought I looked too bored, and—”

“Commander Cullen, you mean to tell me you haven’t one mage who can come here and heal—”

The elven woman who brought Laurel to the infirmary initially, who Cullen addressed as Flora, hollered and pointed her finger at Cullen from across the room, berating him further for not sending him more healers and letting her think this woman was someone who could do more than sing, good as she was. If it was possible, Cullen blushed further, apologizing and promising he would do the task.

“You said that a fortnight ago!” She whacked him straight across the metal at his shoulder, the sound a ping. “Don’t you want your people taken care of?”

“Flora—”

“Templar shem you—”

Sighing, Cullen took the verbal assault. Then Tamlin, of all people spoke up.

“Did you send her here Commander?”

“I—”

“Thank you for the sending the songstress Commander.” He spoke before Cullen could reply, beaming.

“She’s a bard,’ Cullen said through gritted teeth.

Flora rolled her eyes. “Yes yes, lovely voice, but last I checked songs couldn’t mend burns, or—”

“She’s going back to where she came from.”

Laurel cleared her throat. “Excuse me, but—"

“Madam…” Cullen took a deep breath, silencing Laurel. “I must ask you to follow me.”

He was the Commander, he said. He had many people under him, many who reported to him. She was non such person, she thought wickedly.

Tamlin picked up on it too. “It’s not an order though, is it Commander?”

How she laughed, even snorting a bit. Usually she would have minded. But certainly, it wasn’t an order from the Commander.

“I can stay here,” Laurel said. “Besides, I think they like me here.”

“You were there Commander. You heard. She has a lovely voice.”

Did he hear? Somehow, what Tamlin said was one of the more surprising things that happened since the rift. He scoffed at art and singing.

Yet he made no admittance, smoothing an errant lock of hair away from his face and fidgeting. “Either way,” the Commander said, maintaining his gruff, authoritarian persona, “our spymaster would like to meet you. I am not in the habit of picking up women and taking them where they should be, but—”

“You can be.”

She left him speechless, once again. She could get used to it. “I…”

He drew her a challenge. She could be fond of challenges, when she set her mind to it. “Come on,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. “Pick me up and take me.”

“Miss…”

“Now. Don’t make threats without being able to back them up.”

“It was not, a threat.”

Could he turn even redder? She laughed once more, snorting again, but she was long past caring. “It sounded to me an awful lot like a proposal, maybe not a threat. But you can try again and threaten me, or you can accept my proposal to pick me up and— _AHH!_ ”

Her shriek echoed throughout the hall as he scooped her up, his arm directly under her ass. Adjusting, her boobs over his fur coat, clutching it and wondering what sort of fur it was, she waved goodbye to Tamlin and Flora, the two waving back, yet bewildered by their brave and strong Commander picking up the oddly dressed bard like a sack of potatoes. He practically slammed the infirmary door behind him, taking her across the grassy courtyard. Dimly she became aware of Cullen huffing and puffing as he climbed up a stairway. Once inside a grand expansive hall, the hall reminding her of the pictures she saw of Oxford University once, Laurel caught eyes with someone—some who at first appeared as a short man scribbling away at a journal. It was no short man, she realized with wide eyes. He was a dwarf.

“Oh my god” she said, excitement mounting. This was even more like _Lord of the Rings_ than she first thought. “There’s dwarves here too!”

The dwarf, hearing her, looked up from his scribbles. It wasn’t every day a woman got manhandled through the fortress it seemed, as the dwarf’s jaw dropped.

“Uh Curly, who’s that?” he asked. “What in Andraste’s ass are you doing?”

Wondering why he called the Commander “Curly,” Laurel’s ride spun her around so the dwarf could get a good look at her by all accounts, nice ass. Or at least according to some of the more lecherous patrons at the clubs she sang at. Hell, once Michael when he was drunk said her face looked like her ass.

“She fell through one of the rifts,” Cullen said, and she wondered how redder still he became. “We found her out scouting. She comes from away. Dorian will send her back.”

“You’re going to have to wait for that. Sparkler went with the Inquisitor to the Dales.”

“I’m Laurel by the way,” Laurel said, staring at a large and expansive throne, her leg lifting in a strange wave. “Nice to meet you.”

She heard the dwarf chuckle. “You know, this isn’t the first time I’ve been acquainted with a stranger’s ass before shaking their hand.”

“Commander!”

A woman entered the hallway. Tilting her head, Laurel could make out bobbed red hair behind her hood. Still a sack of potatoes on the Commander’s arms, the woman demanded Laurel be set down. She called it unseemly, a scandal, but Laurel assured before she could get angrier that was the one that insisted Cullen pick her up and take her.

“I’m impressed as well,” she said, patting his coat. He smelled like sweet flowers and herbs. And there she was, thinking everyone in medieval times smelled rancid. “You’re not straining yet.”

Still, Cullen put Laurel down. “This is Leliana,” Cullen introduced, Laurel extending her hand. Leliana didn’t take it. With too much hesitation Laurel stuck her hand back to her side, trying not to blush as hard as the Commander did earlier. “She’s a bard,” Cullen continued as Laurel toyed with her hands. “She’s not from here.”

“Oh. You have no idea.”

Leliana looked Laurel up and down. Her gaze was made of sharp daggers outlined by silk. “Are you a recruit?” Leliana asked in the same sort of stabbing way, yet before Laurel could reply she could be, Cullen answered for her. It was his chant of the last few hours: she was going back to where she came from.

“I believe that’s my choice,” Laurel said. “And this place is interesting.”

“It’s tearing apart. It’s already torn.”

She could somewhat see that from her brief glimpses. However…

“It’s new to me,” she said.

“I’m sorry but who are you?”

She could have said anything she wanted, answered Leliana’s questions with a thousand lies. “I come from away,” she chose to say. “Though it’s called Tulsa, if you must know. I’m a singer and I suppose that makes me a bard. I’ve been many places, but never here. Never any place like this. And it seems like the one person who could take me back isn’t here.”

“There must be a way. Perhaps if you went near a rift again…”

At this point, Laurel pointed her finger at the Commander and demanded why on earth he was so adamant she leave. He didn’t have an answer until he stuttered and blubbered that it was dangerous.

“It’s dangerous where I’m from too,” she said.

“Do you though, have a family?”

Laurel shook her head at Leliana’s question. She didn’t say that the one person she loved would also be elsewhere soon, but she painted a sadder picture of a friendless orphan. It wasn’t a lie. Her mother wasn’t a mother until it was convenient for her, and Dad was long gone. He existed only as a memory of happier timed from childhood. Michael wasn’t gone, but he wasn’t good for her. He proved that when he asked her to take it with him. That.

“I’m my own woman,” she said. Her own woman dusted in gold and secrets and songs.

“You want to stay?”

To Leliana’s question, Laurel nodded. She did, she really did. Something happened to her, something she couldn’t explain other than she was in Tulsa and she found herself in a place called Thedas. That place over the rainbow she could only go to before through singing became reality. Gran used to tell her to dream and make up stories with herself, make up new worlds.

She had to embrace it.

“I want to stay,” Laurel said. “At least for now. Doesn’t seem like I have a choice anyway.”

“We’ll see what Dorian has to say.”

She didn’t like Cullen’s tone. “Why do you not like me Commander? You were nice to me before. You saved me from those Red Templars.”

If he had an answer, Laurel couldn’t read it on his face. He had a thousand things to do, he said before storming off. Trouble, Laurel thought. Big trouble.

Yet left with Leliana, Laurel read her as stoic as ever, though whatever knives she carried were sheathed.

“Well,” Leliana said, Laurel discerning a French accent, which in Thedas was called Orlesian. Apparently. “I did need to speak with him anyway. I do know something you can do, perhaps.”

“You’re not going to check my credentials?”

Leliana smiled, a rare occurrence, though Laurel didn’t know it at the time. “You being here irritates the Commander. That is enough for me.”

She would meet with Laurel later to speak with her. Laurel needed only to wait for a little bit. After Leliana left, her steps light and airy and bard-like, she tapped her foot and hummed “Dreams” to herself, thinking she could have at least traveled with her guitar. She’d fallen into the arms of a Commander, had to run for her life, sang to a grieving elven man and seen a dwarf with her own two eyes. If she could get back, whoever had the power to do it wasn’t there. Yet all she wanted was her guitar. Maybe the song she always wanted to write would come to her here.

And yes. She was there. Though she didn’t ever doubt.

In the midst of it all, she felt eyes upon her. The dwarf wore a strange sort of smirk, waving his hand over. Laurel walked over, taking a seat next to him when he offered in front of the fire.

“So,” he said, “Where are you from exactly? What’s your story?”

She saw an opportunity. “If I tell you, will you also tell me more about this place? I know some, but not everything."

“You got a deal Tulsa.”

She gathered it would be her new name. It was fitting in ways Varric wouldn’t understand. New York or Los Angeles no one wanted to forget Laurel was from Tulsa Oklahoma, where the wind came sweeping down the plain. Before she began however, the dwarf, who introduced himself as Varric Tethras, asked her one question.

“Why did you let Curly pick you up and carry you? You seem capable of taking care of yourself.”

Laurel smirked. “It isn’t often a man…” also one easy on the eyes, though grumpy as he was, “…proposes to pick you up and carry you.”

“You like that sort of thing?”

She had one question, “Why shouldn’t I?”

"Ha! The Iron Bull said the same thing to me."

Her brows furrowed. “Who’s the Iron Bull?”

Varric chuckled. “Ah Tulsa. One thing at a time. One thing at a time...”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> drop me a Valentine and leave a comment lol (Only if you want of course <3)


	4. Dreams

Cullen waited for Dorian. He needed to know if it was possible to send the bard back to where she came from. Of course all was dependent on if she would even go, and he sometimes asked himself why he was so adamant to send her back. He could ignore her if he wished.

Frankly, she was hard to ignore. Frankly, if she even left he dared to wonder if he'd still think of her.

While they waited, Leliana put her to work. Her skirts swished all over the battlements and in the courtyards at Skyhold. She whispered and murmured not quietly enough for his ears. She spoke with guards and senior officer of his alike, asking questions of how brave was the fine Commander, and is he treating you well? She spoke to the mages too, asking if they ever felt threated by the former Knight Commander of Kirkwall. He knew it all, even if she did manage to avoid the same spaces as he. Loud whispers carried. Gossip was wildfire. And what else could she possibly ask? And Leliana thought Cullen wouldn’t know. He was consumed with tasks but no matter how many thousands of things he had to do, he knew too well what it was like being spoken of. Fruitive, periodic glances toward him as he traveled through the keep, the sudden silence whenever he entered a room, and glimmers of her dark hair were enough signs. It happened after the Blight and it happened in Kirkwall. Oh Cullen has that stare. So twitchy. He’d follow Meredith to the void and back. Had he known the woman that fell into his arms would be Leliana’s newest way of somehow catching him he would have left her there.

Except it wasn’t true. But scared and frightened as her brown eyes were when she fell before fainting, there was such wonder later as he rode with her. He got the feeling if she saw a dragon soar over their heads she’d run to it to get a better look. She wouldn’t have made it anywhere. Skyhold was where she would have to go, at least until Dorian could bring her back where she came from. He hoped. Maker, since carrying her up the stairs to the great hall he’d gotten more than few looks from some of his men, with Rylen even asking if he was partaking in one of those Avaar rituals of capturing a bride to the bedroom.

“They are consensual,” Cullen said, recalling the books on the subject.

“Oh? Isn’t that what it was?”

By miles, Rylen looked far too happy. Cullen grit his teeth and tried not to recall how close her rear was to his face.

In a moment of respite between reports in his office, he thought of the Bard and the things she said and where she was from. She said “Tulsa,” but no map had such a place. She also said she was from “away,” though what that “away” meant he couldn’t fully fathom. Perhaps he wasn’t meant to. Perhaps she was merely supposed to be there. A woman sent from the fade, exclusively to be his pain in the arse...

Perhaps there were worst fates.

Two days passed with whispers and murmurs, all instigated by the bard. Cullen however had no direct confrontation with her. He would have said “good” to anyone that asked how he felt about that, but truthfully her perplexing nature made him think he’d have to see her again to form a firmer opinion.

The third day after her arrival allowed an opportunity. She came to him unprompted, in yet another new dress.Some of his men desperately needed new armor. Some wore the same worn boots they had since Haven and she walked in new clothes, this a red pinafore with the long red skirt over a white billowy top. Not silken finery as the Orlesians wore when they came to Skyhold, but vibrant. She already stood out as it was. She didn’t need cherry red.

“Hello Commander,” she said when she came to him. Out of all the ethereal, otherworldly things about her, her voice perplexed the most. It was a rich velvet set at a lower register, and it made even the simplest phrases and even her curses poem-like. When she goaded him and demanded he fulfill his halfway threat and pick her up and take her to Leliana himself it was a sweet song. Typical of bards, he imagined. Voices and promises were their traps. He wouldn’t be ensnared.

“Bard,” he greeted, barely looking up from his work reports as she came nearer, the desk a barrier between them.

“You know I have a name,” she reminded. “It’s Laurel.”

He knew. Laurels symbolized victory, though how it was apropos to her, he couldn’t say. A strange name by all accounts, as he thought from the first.

He must have voiced it out loud. “My father named me,” she said.

He recalled she said she had no family, at least at the present. “Where is he now?”

“I’m not sure. He left when I was young. My mother went after him and couldn’t find him.”

Yet she wasn’t too indifferent about it all. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t mean it.”

He did, but trying to explain so wouldn’t make her believe him. At any rate, she was in his office. He asked what she was doing here.

“Oh, Josephine asked me if I would check on you. She said you looked ill in the war room last time she saw you.”

A headache he told her when she asked, nothing more. She never mentioned it outright like Cassandra did, but she knew of his choices. Her eyes spoke a thousand apologies she shrewdly didn’t voice, knowing he wouldn’t want that.

His headache dulled since, though being reminded was like a prong against his skull. “Not doing Leliana’s work?” he asked, gritting his teeth.

She put her hand on her hips, one of her common stances, along with a pursed lip and quirked brows. “Now how would you know that?” she asked, sufficiently disappointed.

“I would imagine the spymaster would find some use for you whilst we wait for you to go back.”

“I may not want to go back.”

“I would imagine,” Cullen said, rising from his char, “that everyone wants to go back to where they come from.”

“Not everyone is you, Commander.”

Such cool tones she used, as if she spent every day of her life in verbal tete a tetes. “I wasn’t—”

She leaned in, an eyebrow quirking upward. “I know your type. You think the world revolves around you and your big feet. It doesn’t.”

She had been listening to Leliana. It was fine. He had the respect of his men, the Inquisitor would come soon. He hoped.

“My feet are not big,” he said.

“I’m not scolding you.”

“Sounds an awful lot like you are.”

“It wasn’t. But I can scold if you want. I would need to spend more time with you however for a proper roast.”

“Roast? Like roast chicken?”

“It’s a phrase where I’m from,” she said with a smile. Her lips, he noticed, were peach colored through lip paint. “It’s teasing, or jesting about a certain individual.”

It sounded barbaric. “What sort of place is this?”

“Some place far away. Like I said.”

“You know, you’re a creative sort. I’m certain you can think of something to…roast me about. Other than I dress like a clown, apparently.”

“No.”

Was that…disappointment he felt? No, it couldn’t be. “Bard…”

“Lady Josephine said she was worried about you.” By her face, he wondered if she worried too. “I have to ask. Do you sleep? You have dark circles like Lady Macbeth.”

“Who?”

“Let’s just say she didn’t get much sleep.”

“I get plenty of sleep,” he lied.

“Varric says you’ve always had them.”

It figured she’d be friendly with Varric. He wondered how much she spoke about with her. “Bar—Miss, if you don’t mind I’m waiting on a report.”

“Josephine also wanted me to remind you that you have a fitting for a new doublet—”

“That can wait, Castelli’s report cannot.”

“Castelli?”

The name drew her brows together in a knot, her eyes pensive. “Castelli?” she said once more. “That…that’s impossible.”

“What’s the matter?”

“My father’s last name was—is Castelli. My name is Laurel Castelli.”

He did think she had a vague look about her that read as familiar. “Castelli is from Nevarra,” Cullen recalled. “Are you Nevarran? You never mentioned it earlier.” 

“I’m from Tulsa.”

Names often repeated. “So, no relation I trust?”

“If there is, it is the grandest coincidence in the world.”

She bid him good day, her skirts still swishing as she exited. Cullen considered. Maybe she was Nevarran. Castelli held a stubborn streak. It made him formidable on the battlefield. It was the same for Cassandra. Then again, Fereldans also had the reputation of being stubborn.

Why else would he have carried her to the great hall? He wanted to show her he could.

* * *

Laurel wasn’t yet completely used to this place called Thedas, though through Varric, Leliana, Josephine, and the soldiers she spoke to, she understood the Inquisition. For the most part.

She was in a haze and daze, and if she was honest with herself she could have really used a blunt. She didn’t often smoke, as overrelaxation didn’t always appeal to her, but in her three days in Skyhold she met mages who wielded fire and ice, archers, elves and dwarves. She also met Elven mages and warriors, a fancy diplomat and a spymaster who was “scarier than her voice would make you believe,” as Varric said, though Laurel didn’t need much convincing with that regard. In her frantic roaming and adjustment, she could really, really a way to relax.

Her moods were phases. Sometimes she accepted easily she was in another world, sometimes she wanted to run the ramparts shouting what the fuck, what the fuck. And then there was her research. She read history novels on Thedas and listened to Varric’s talk, reading Tale of the Champion at his behest to understand the world before the breach. Thedas was a mess before the “conclave,” mages and templars at war and the religious institution in a schism. Then some guy came along and wanted to be a god and remake the world. The Inquisition was trying to stop it. That all made sense. Kind of.

“Can’t wait till Hawke meets you,” Varric said when Laurel came back to him with her notes and questions on Tale of the Champion.

“Her boyfriend is an elf glows,” Laurel said, holding the book. “Sounds interesting.” About as interesting as the Commander of the Inquisition’s past as detailed in the novel.

Her first and fairest friend used to be a templar. It must have been why battling against the Red Templars affected him so much. He also used to work for who Laurel assumed was the biggest, baddest templar in Kirkwall. He changed sides toward the end, helped rebuild the city as well after the mage called Anders set a bomb to the city’s religious institution, the chantry. (Templars, mages, the chantry…so many new terms Laurel had to learn, but her good memory served her well during her life, and wasn’t failing her yet.) From where Laurel came from, magic would be assumed as cool, something revered even. In Lord of the Rings, magic was revered. Not so much here. It made sense in a way. Magic was dangerous as fire was dangerous. It wasn’t unquestionable to have mages learn how to use their magic, though from what Laurel overheard from a few Circle mages, the Circle was a sham.

Cullen apparently didn’t think so once. If he still thought so, Laurel couldn’t say.

“He was misguided,” Varric said to the list of questions Laurel had about the Commander. “And he went through a lot. But he’s getting better.”

She could see why Leliana wanted her to survey some of the mages and some of his soldiers, something she gladly did to get under the spymaster’s good graces. Cullen may have called her a bard but Leliana made sure to tell Laurel there were exactly zero records for her under the Bard’s college in Orlais. (Leaving Laurel to ask, “there’s a college here for bards?”)

“I’m not a spy for Coryphanus, if that’s what you think,” Laurel had to say to Leliana, correcting it to “Corypheus” when she realized her blunder. “I actually fell through the rift and came far away. I wasn’t lying. I know that sounds weird, and impossible, but it is true. Confirm it with Cullen, Lysette and Rylen.”

Three former templars, Leliana said in an almost accusatory tone, though only one still proudly called herself as such. Cullen and Rylen were both former templars, though one had trouble letting go. Laurel could guess which one Leliana meant. However, with their testimony, and with the angel known as Josephine Montilyet’s behest, Laurel was able to stay. Albeit she had to conduct her “operations,” even if she wasn’t very good at them.

“You seem like you have a rough patch of late,” Josephine even said as she showed Laurel around, allowing her a few extra clothes to wear in place of Laurel’s recently dirtied jeans. Apparently, the leader of this Inquisition known as Inquisitor Ellana Lavellan refused half the clothes Josephine bought for her. Somewhat the same size, though Ellana was thinner, Laurel got some of the leftovers deemed “too extravagant,” by the Inquisitor, as well as a room towards the far end of the fortress up a tower. No one wanted the room because of the tree that grew next to it, the branched leaking through making closing the window impossible. The room was small, with just a bed and a trunk at the end, a dresser where she stored all her given clothes, and a vanity. There was even a lute in the room. Whoever was there before her was also a musician, or at least Laurel liked to think so. Why else would there be a lute there?

At night after reading her volumes, acquainting herself with Thedas, she practiced. It wasn’t too much different from her guitar, but she found the strings not as compliant to her usually nimble fingers. You just need more practice, she thought, trying out “Dreams.” She wasn’t the best at reading music, something her teachers throughout school chided her for, and perhaps why she majored in English rather than music in college. She learned by ear. She tried the same with the lute, willing her fingers to play.

Sitting outside that evening after meeting with Cullen, she considered going back to her room for more practice. She thought she got “Dreams” down pretty well, adapting the melodies to fit the lute. She had to have music here. The nights were too quiet.

How was she supposed to feel without her music?

“Bubbling, bursting. Wonder at the new world.”

Her thoughts were like oceans, and Cole found the smallest pond. The two sat next to each other outside the upper courtyard. He could read minds and make people forget…somehow, but Varric told her she had nothing to worry about. It was something Laurel understood when she first met Cole near the infirmary. If she had to choose the strangest person she came across since she fell on her ass in Thedas and into a grumpy Commander’s arms she’d probably pick Cole, though she was still waiting to meet the Iron Bull.

But she liked him. He burned turnips so one of the soldiers could smell his mother’s homemade turnip stew before he passed. She thought he was neat. And kind.

“You’ll understand soon,” Cole said next to her, and Laurel didn’t even bother to ask what he was referring to there.

“I’m not just worried about that,” Laurel replied, sighing. “The Inquisitor may not like me and kick me out. Though Leliana says once she finds out how much my presence annoys the Commander…”

“Perplexing. Strange woman into my arms, voice like honey. Challenging eyes. Not a mage, but ethereal. Where’s over the rainbow?”

Cole said a lot of strange things. That was, by far, the strangest. Cullen was no fan of bards or singing, or singing birds.

“He still wants to see me go,” she said. “But maybe I don’t want to go. I mean, I’m in a different world. That’s always been something I’ve dreamed about. Why would I want to leave just because there’s a war going on and it’s dangerous and…”

She trailed off. Strange woman in a strange world, sitting with a strange boy. It was quaint, picturesque. Fascinating.

Most people would have probably wanted to get their ass back in their own dimension, but there were probably some people that would want to stay just as well. Yes, Laurel was strange. She was more aware of that now than ever, just accepting whatever had been happening. Well, they called her witchy at the clubs, a Stevie Nicks sort, though Laurel knew her grandmother to be the first Stevie Nicks. Laurel also couldn’t write like Stevie, something she told Varric as well. He even gifted her the journal she saw him initially write in along with a quill, thinking she’d have better luck writing in it than he did. He told her it might help her get her thoughts sorted out, but so far all her thoughts were scattered stars.

Other people wrote songs that made sense, and she sang them both because that was how she felt, and because when everyone listened to music they were their own sort of strange.

“You be strange bunny,” Gran always said. “Make up stories of other worlds and pretend you’re a mermaid or a fairy.”

There was indeed, a reason Gran called her bunny. As a little girl, she used to pretend she was a bunny, though Dad called her Bunny first and Gran picked it up because it was unique. Then someone in the second grade told her she was stupid for thinking herself a bunny and she kept the rest of her stories to herself after that.

In Thedas, she wasn’t the strangest one anymore. She was a strange woman in a world full of strange people with strange magic during a war. That never changed at least.

Neither did music, or the power of it. Tamlin taught her that.

Sitting next to Cole, thoughts drifting, she heard a lute play. It must have been from the tavern. One of the templars she spoke to, whose name she didn’t remember with brown hair and a ruddy complexion mentioned she should come to the tavern while she was making her rounds. He didn’t even have to mention he was a templar, Laurel could tell by the skirt thing he wore, the telltale uniform. Maybe that was why Cullen left. The uniform was atrocious. Didn’t explain why he still dressed like a clown however.

Invited to the tavern or not, Laurel’s interest piqued. Maryden was Skyhold’s bard, according the templar whose name Laurel forgot. She wanted to hear her play, maybe pick up a few of the local songs. Songs were people, and she wanted to know the people here.

“You like singing and songs,” Cole said. “Go see.”

She did, rising and slipping inside. The lute softly played as Laurel wandered, thankfully the templar whose name Laurel forgot was nowhere to be found, and she inconspicuously managed to plop on one of the corner seats. From afar and through her playing of the lute and voice, Laurel became acquainted with Maryden Halewell. The templar whose name Laurel forgot spoke highly of her, and Laurel found she had a lovely, clear voice like a sunny day. She sang of a woman named Sera who lived in a tavern, a woman who was “a rogue, and a thief” and would tempt fate. Laurel listened and tapped her foot, the song easy to get into. She clapped after the final strum, others joining. And yet there was one in the tavern who didn’t clap, one blonde haired elf.

“Creepy song is creepy,” she said, loud enough for Laurel to here. In the ruckus that followed Laurel learned it was the Sera the song was about, none too pleased at where Maryden got her inspiration. The two argued, Maryden batting her eyelashes and Sera telling her not play coy and cute. Others watched with various degrees of amusement, and in a dull trance, Laurel hardly noticed Tamlin come next to her until she caught a glimpse of his ginger hair in her peripherals.

“Hello,” she said warmly, glad to see he was well. “I hope you’re doing alright.”

“Better now. Your song healed me.”

Songs couldn’t heal, Laurel said, but they made it better for a time. Tamlin wasn’t so sure, praising her voice and her song.

“You should sing,” he said, surely not a serious wish.

“Oh, I couldn’t. I—”

It was another man that spoke next, Laurel’s jaw dropping. She heard tales of the Iron Bull, mainly from Varric. He was a “qunari,” and his muscles and broad chest frankly unlocked a part of her she often kept buried. He was…so large. Larger than any man Laurel had ever seen. And the horns…

“We’ve been hearing the same songs over and over again,” he said, holding a pint of something. “If you can sing something else in addition to your bad spying, please do.”

She crossed her arms. Varric did tell her the Iron Bull was a spy, and supposedly a good one. Of course he would sniff out a bad spy.

“It was Leliana who wanted me to spy,” she said in her weak defense. “Look, I may be a bard but the whole spying thing is frankly new to me, so…”

“You think your better? Then sing something better.”

Did the entire tavern quiet to hear Laurel’s conversations? Maryden and Sera quarreled and she thought that’s what everyone was focusing on as Tamlin and then the Iron Bull spoke to her.  
Maryden glared at her, challenging her still. Laurel gulped.

“Don’t be afraid,” Tamlin said, half pushing her to the center of the room where Maryden outstretched her lute. “You are good.”

Maryden’s lute was hers for the taking. She peered around. Not one pair of eyes wasn’t on her, including the templar whose name Laurel forgot.

“You want a song?” she asked the tavern.

Sera snorted. “Anything but what we just heard, yeah.”

She snatched Maryden’s lute. The bard smirked and ho-hummed at Laurel. She expects me to fail, does she? Well…

She didn’t introduce the song. It needed no introduction. It was new for them too, these people of Thedas who Laurel ended up with. But love, romance, breaking up and dreams were universal, just as war was universal from place to place, dimension to dimension. Stevie Nicks wrote “Dreams” about Lindsay Buckingham, or so Laurel assumed. They had a raw love, a passionate one, even if it didn’t work out. A dreamlike love.

In Thedas too, like where Laurel was from: women. They will come, and they will go. And when the rain washes clean, they’ll all known.

“Dreams” she sang, by Fleetwood Mac, though written by Stevie Nicks. She didn't think she was _as_ good as Stevie. But she was good.

Truth to be told her skills at the lute weren’t as yet practiced, but scarcely anyone noticed as the song finished and the clapping began. “Tulsa!” Varric exclaimed, Laurel catching him in the crowd. “You can sing Tulsa!”

Clapping, cheering even. She was in the center of the room, maybe that Tulsa queen, maybe just a girl who got thrown in a strange land, maybe a dreamer, a Stevie Nicks wannabe.

And then…

“Laurel!”

Once more, the room quieted, though not for any reason of Laurel’s. No, the people in the tavern were still clapping for her. There was only one man that wasn’t.

He had brown hair like Laurel’s, brown eyes like Laurel’s. He looked different since last she saw him, older and with grey in his hair, lines from age and sun lining his face. He wore the armor of the Inquisition…but didn’t Cullen say Castelli was the name of one of his officers? Didn’t Laurel find it odd that there was someone named “Castelli” in this place called Thedas?

Laurel hadn’t seen her father since she was a little girl. He went off to Italy on an adventure and didn’t come back.

That wasn’t true. It wasn’t true at all.

“You went to Thedas,” she said to her father, coming to him, his hands cupping her face, trying to see where she had sprouted in all these years.

“And you found your way here too,” Dad said. “Laurel…I—

She wished she could have said something more poetic as he took her in his arms in one long, overdue hug. All she could manage was “well, shit.”

She passed out after, of course. One could only go through so many shocks in a week.


	5. Sherry

She came to outside the tavern. Anthony Castelli, now officer Castelli of the Inquisition, her father, hit her cheeks and brought her back to the waking world, holding her hand and patting her back to ease her. He chanted her name over and over, _Laurel, Laurel, is that you Laurel?_ He didn't know what to say. Really he wanted to just look at her she realized, at least for the time being. Last he saw her she was a preteen, awkward looking and in the process of sprouting. He missed so much roaming Thedas.

Fuck. Her father was in Thedas.

She half listened, half basked in the implausible plausibility and truth of the matter as he blubbered on about the impossible, which was indeed, possible. Laurel would have questioned further had she been the version of her last week that sat by her dying grandma listening to The Beach Boys, but at that point outside the tavern, she had seen mages, elves, dwarves and horned giants called qunari. Her father was in Thedas. What was she supposed to do other than say okay?

“I don’t care how we’re both here,” he said as Laurel stared, sitting next to him on the balustrade. “I just care that we are. Laurel. Bunny…”

All those years she had been told by her mother that her father was a deadbeat, all those years she tried to convince herself he was a deadbeat despite the fond memories not fully disappearing. He wasn’t, in fact, a deadbeat. At least not on purpose. Merely his brief trip to Italy where he wandered through a museum in Florence sent him to Thedas through a strange mirror on display. He came through the mirror and into some elven woman’s house where she helped him and brought him to her friends. Eventually, he began working for Kirkwall's city guard. Laurel knew enough of recent Thedas history to know Kirkwall was a shit place to end up. However, he made the most of it, and the connection acquainted her father with the then Knight-Captain, later Knight Commander Cullen. It led him to join the Inquisition. It led him to Laurel.

“I’m sorry but…” Laurel rubbed her temples, head spinning. He still smelled the same, that scent you couldn’t name but only know as the distinct smell of someone you knew. “Dad, what the fuck is going on?”

“Maker’s breath,” he said, rubbing at his temples too. “Laurel your mouth has gotten worse since you were a little girl…”

“Maker’s breath? You say Maker’s breath?”

He shrugged, grinning. “You get used to the phrases here I suppose.”

“My father is in Thedas. My father is in Thedas...”

“Perhaps some families have the ability to travel through different places. You know, my father disappeared—”

“Dad!” She put his hands on his shoulders, shook him. He used to be able to pick her up, though age had withered him like it withered all. Yet he still had a finesse and power about him, impressive as it was, as he had to be nearing fifty. God damn. Nearing fifty, involved in what happened at Kirkwall, and one of Cullen’s officers for the Inquisition.

She got up and paced the courtyard. Out of all the things that happened to her this was what she had the hardest time swallowing. After her brief stint running off, she found she was okay with being on her own in this strange place. She could be herself when she was alone. What was she expected to do now, bond with her father who she hadn’t seen since she was a preteen?

She wasn’t the same bunny she was when he jetted off to Italy—which was really Thedas. Apparently. She traveled and she had a lot of shit happen to her. She smoked sometimes, she fucked and had gone to protests even if she couldn’t write what she wanted to write. She found her solace through the words of other people. That was how she coped and learned and lived. And now she was in Thedas with her father.

“Shit Dad,” she said as he came toward her, hugged her in an embrace she neither returned nor pulled from. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Tell me everything. I have so much to catch up on.”

He held her shoulders, looked at her and laughed. “Laurel. My victory after the war.”

He took her and he held her once more. This time, she returned the embrace. His Laurel, his victory. After everything he saw in Europe during the war, she was the reminder it was all worth fighting for. Course, as it turned out he would walk into another war without her.

“I wished for this,” he said. “Bunny girl. Darling.”

His armor should have hurt more against her, yet sighing, she embraced him tightly, warmly. “You’re a singer,” he said when he parted, holding her shoulders. “And a damn good one too…”

“Well, your man Cullen thinks I’m a bard, and Leliana had me spy on him…”

“What?”

Don’t worry she assured. The commander was smart and caught on. “But he wants me gone and thinks Dorian Grey or whatever is his name is can send me back through another rift or…”

“He wants you gone?”

“I mean that is my decision—"

“Perhaps it would be safer that way, but—”

“What?”

She couldn’t believe it. All that and he…agreed with the Commander? All that, so glad to see you bunny! Not to mention the entire plausibility of the fact that yes they were both in Thedas of all places…

“Thedas is dangerous,” her father said. “We’re at war, and—”

“You don’t think America isn’t shit right now?”

“Bunny—”

She fumed. “There was a war that lasted almost my whole life for no good reason. Do you know how many people died? And you…” She prodded at the metal chest plate he wore. “Why didn’t you even try to come back?”

In all his speeches and explanations, it was something he never said or mentioned, that he tried to come back. She knew the truth. He didn’t try. Perhaps if it were different, if she were different, he would have tried.

“Laurel, when I first came here I didn’t think it possible. When the rifts started appearing after the breach, and we were told of what they could do, there was no guarantee.” He held her once more. She avoided his brown eyes, too much like hers. “But seeing you here, maybe it is possible.”

“You have a life here. That’s why. But you don’t want me to have a life here, and—

“What kind of life would you have?” He broke the embrace again. “Laurel—”

“Do you mean as a woman? Jesus there are powerful women here, good women. I couldn’t be one of them?”

He sighed. “Need I remind you again. This is war. This is dangerous. We here are trained to fight. Corypheus could strike us here and what would happen then? Did you ever see fighting Laurel? I have, I—”

He acted like all there was here was war, when she knew it wasn’t true. There was so much more. She found it with Tamlin. She found it in the tavern. She found it for a moment with her father.

“What can you do Laurel?” he asked. “I came here a soldier. What—"

“Sing. Make people happy. It’s the only thing I’m good at anyway.”

He didn’t like her tone or self-deprecation. He stared, taken aback, insisting it couldn’t be true. She had people that loved her for more.

She crossed her arms. “Mom hates me and Gran is probably dead by now…”

“What?”

Cancer, Laurel replied, not wishing to discuss it further. Gran may not have been her father’s mother but he always liked her and got along with her—sometimes more so than Mom.

“Your mother loves you.”

“Really?” Laurel asked. “She didn’t ask me to stay as I left. She watched me go. Course she guilted me before, but I waited for her to call me back. She didn’t.”

“Your mother loves you,” Dad said once more, much more desperately. “She doesn’t hate you. She never would. She would want you back.”

“No she wouldn’t. And you don’t want me back either.”

“Laurel—”

“You wouldn’t be so quick to send me off.”

“I want to know you,” he said. “I do. But I have spent years and years wondering if you were safe and now I know and—”

“Maybe you should have never have gone to Italy in the first place.”

He didn’t call her name as she left. It hurt more than her mother not calling her back that night.

* * *

“What’s wrong?”

Though Castelli returned to Skyhold the previous night, Cullen opted to wait till morning to hear the report. Castelli delivered it to Cullen without issue, though there was something in his downward gaze and slumped shoulders that hinted something was wrong. “Nothing,” Castelli replied however.

Cullen frowned. “I know that’s not true.

He gave up, sighing. That was Castelli. He was different from Rylen who could keep his emotions bottled up, different from Cullen himself who did the same. Sometimes Cullen envied Castelli for it. He talked freely about his struggles the way Cullen couldn’t.

“It’s my daughter. Laurel is—

“The bard is your daughter.”

He almost dropped the papers he held, scattering them on the desk. “I haven’t seen her in years,” Castelli said without a beat, pacing the office. Whatever he’d been carrying it was something he dared not carry any longer, and Cullen…

Damn, damn, damn…

Cullen should have known when he first saw her near the rift. He knew parts of her face and knew her idiosyncratic pacing reminded of another. The signs were always there.

“How did she end up through a rift?” Cullen asked.

He paused his pacing. “I don’t know.”

“What was she doing before the Inquisition?”

“Singing?” Castelli said, though his tone indicated he wasn’t sure. “I haven’t seen her in years. She’s grown up. I missed so much of her life, but…”

He sighed deeply, defeated. “I have to send her back.”

It should have been music to hear. Yet Cullen asked why.

“It’s dangerous here,” Castelli said as if Cullen didn’t know. It seemed however it was dangerous everywhere.

“But she’s your daughter.”

Castelli faced him, brows knit together. Cullen felt a surge of impassion. Strange, but he opted not to fight it. “You said you missed her,” he said. “You want to send her back now? And…I’m confused. I thought you were Nevarran. She never mentioned she was from Neverra—”

“Let’s say that her mother is from a very strange place and that is where Laurel has been.”

“Tulsa?”

Castelli nodded. “Tulsa. Sure. Damn Oklahoma with the plains and…”

“Where?”

He waved his hand. “Never mind.”

“The point of the matter is,” Cullen said not wishing to dwell on more riddles, “you can’t possibly want to send her away after this."

Cullen remembered it now, Castelli drunk one night in Kikrwall while Cullen was sober. I have a daughter. I wish I could know her, but she’s so far away. I just want to know she’s safe and that I love her.

“You always wanted to know her,” Cullen said. “She’s here. Know her.”

“Well look who’s talking! Have you seen your family?”

“It’s different,” Cullen said, though he wasn’t sure how much.

“Very different from mine. I assure you. Now. I’ll be here if you need me Commander. I know the Inquisitor is arriving today. I’m sure she has a lot to say.”

“Wait.”

Castelli paused, turning. “Yes Commander?”

Cullen cleared his throat. “Is there, really people who act through screens called movees? I’ve never heard of such things in Nevarra from you or Cassandra.”

“It’s not from Nevarra,” Castelli replied, the weight of the world on his shoulders. “It’s from Tulsa.”

He almost was afraid to ask. “Why have I never heard of such a place?”

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Commander Cullen, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Castelli said that once before. It was from a story he said, something from where he came from. Cullen didn’t think much on it the first time Castelli mentioned it, back in Kirkwall after the explosion. That was, however, before the breach, before Laurel.

That song she sang in the infirmary implied there was a place somewhere beyond as well. But what was even over the rainbow anyway?

Cullen didn’t have to think of it constantly. He didn’t want to, and yet when he happened to find her in the great hall, just outside of Josephine’s office, he noted her furrowed brows and red cheeks. She made a face when she saw him—not an entirely bad one as she only raised her brows, but it certainly wasn’t a smile.

“Oh. Hello,” she greeted stiffly. “I’ve been fired from my spying job.”

Such a matter-of-fact tone. “My lady, you weren’t very good at it…”

“My lady?” She scoffed. “You really have to mock me? You…a clown? God damn.”

“I am not a clown.”

“We looked like clowns the other day,” she muttered under her breath.

“You include yourself?”

“Sure. I am a clown. Why not?”

“You have a good voice for a clown.”

She raised her eyebrows, though she thanked him. It was better than good, actually. It was melodic and lulling with a honeyed sweetness. If voices could wrap themselves and envelop, the bard’s voice would have several enveloped.

“I am sorry you were sacked,” he offered, as it was the nice thing to do, scratching the back of his neck.

“It wasn’t only you. My father’s position as your officer would make it look bad if I was out spying. Apparently. Doesn’t matter though, I can stay on as a singer. Maryden won’t always be here and the Inquisitor likes that I annoy you.”

“I rather think you like to annoy me yourself.”

“You make it so fun.”

“Then why are you cantankerous?” he asked, as she was doing a marvelous job of sufficiently annoying him at present.

“Well,” she began, drawing out the word. “My father, who I haven’t seen in years, wants to send me away. Just like you do.”

“Not necessarily.”

She blinked. “I’m sorry I’m confused.”

Frankly, he was too. They dueled without words, the bard holding her head higher to make herself taller. “Rylen says you have a thing against bards and singing and singing bards,” she said.

“This place is large. We can avoid one another well enough. It’s not as though I go to the tavern much.”

He heard Maryden sing sometimes as he passed by. She had a lovely voice and it wasn’t as if some of the songs she sang didn’t appeal to him. He used to enjoy the singing in the chantry. Simpler days.

“You should go once in a while,” the bard said. “You look like you can use a drink.”

“I’ll pass.”

“Shame. The Commander needs a hobby.”

He thought of the adventure novel he had on his bedside table. “I have plenty of hobbies.”

“Engaging in tête-à-têtes and picking up women isn’t be a hobby.”

“Well." He cleared his throat. "Why not?”

She gave a shrug of mocking indifference, but offered a small “fine,” before her skirts swished away.

* * *

Laurel noticed Inquisitor Ellana and presumably, her man in the tavern later as she sat in one of the corner seats, listening to Maryden sing of an empress of fire. The Inquisitor’s man was a big and burly bearded warrior named Blackwall, and Laurel could see a faint blush paint his cheeks as Ellana rested an auburn head against Blackwall’s shoulder. Varric gave her all the juicy gossip about the two of them. He was spending nights in her quarters, and Josephine had to quell the rumors about it. The Inquisition put so much stock in whisperings and murmurs and what everyone was saying about each other. Another aspect of the new world not so different from Laurel’s.

It was official: she was allowed to stay at Skyhold. At Leliana’s insistence earlier that day, Laurel spoke to the Inquisitor who told her she could stay on the mere principle that it vexed Cullen. “No more spying though,” Ellana ordered. “Leliana says you aren’t good at it. He caught on.”

Laurel didn’t even have to sing if she didn’t want to. Her father was an important officer and the Inquisition could make reparations for his daughter. It was custom and what was expected, even if she hadn’t seen her father in years. Not only that, but she hadn’t seen her father since last she spoke to him. Such fate then she saw him enter the tavern from her spot in the corner. She was in for two surprises as well, as Cullen was behind him.

She laughed in bitter irony. She thought he didn’t have time for hobbies other than getting in tête-à-têtes with her.

With a tankard of mead, her father sat next to her. She offered a stiff greeting, still uneasy and miffed as she was. She did however tell him that she was indeed angry at him. How couldn’t she be? He didn’t want her to stay. He didn’t want to get to know her.

“I do Bunny. I want you to tell me everything. Not just the bad but the good.”

Shit. She didn’t want to cry in front of him, this man that was almost a stranger. She didn’t think anyone would call her Bunny again since Gran.

No. No tears. She had to be angry. “I’m not leaving.”

“I know.”

She bit her lip. She didn’t expect that. “You going to throw a fit?”

“Of course not. You’re a grown woman and you can make your own decisions.”

His eyes were soft. His words were true. “Do you want to go back?” she asked.

“You’re here now. All my reason to go back is here.”

“Not even Mom?”

He sighed, eyes downcast. “You know things weren’t the best between us. I’m not sure what she would say. I’m not sure if she would want to see me.”

“Mom didn’t tell me to stay when I left Tulsa. She made her opinion clear. She didn’t like my choices.”

He asked her what they were. She told him what he probably could have guessed, she sang in clubs and weddings. Songs he would have known and songs he never heard because he left too soon into her life.

“I’m proud of you.”

She thanked him, not so sure how proud he’d be if he knew her whole life and all her choices. Still, she smiled.

“Maybe you’re not such a cynic.”

She raised her brows, sipping her mead. “I, a cynic? Whatever do you mean?”

“When we talked you were different,” he answered, sipping his own mead.

“Of course I’m different. I was a little girl back then.”

“But I never expected my daughter to be so cynical.”

She plopped her tankard on the table. “What about you? You wanted me to leave. Shit. You probably wouldn’t even sing ‘Sherry’ to me anymore.”

“Laurel.”

She knew that tone, it was the same he used when she was a girl when she asked something of him. It was a tone she knew well.

_“Sherry….Sherry baby…”_

Her mouth dropped. Still such a falsetto. Still. All eyes on her father he blushed and drank his tankard of mead dry, as the tavern quieted. “More,” someone demanded, someone that sounded suspiciously like Rylen.

“I couldn’t,” her father said and others asked him too, sing the rest. They wanted a new song anyway much to Maryden’s chagrin. They kept hearing the same songs over and over again, and oh look, there Tulsa was too. The templar whose name Laurel forgot the other day came over, clapped her on the back, and said he wouldn’t mind hearing another song from her. She recoiled. He grimaced and backed off.

“Who’s Sherry?”

Cullen, alone with his tankard nearby, asked. A thousand quips she had for him, what are you doing here? I thought you didn’t listen to music? “Just any girl,” Laurel said instead. “Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons sang of her.”

“Who’s Frankie Valli?” Rylen asked next. “Never heard of them.”

“They are from where we are,” Laurel said, motioning to her father. “They are an older band but they have good songs. Timeless in my opinion. My father here used to sing their song “Sherry” for me with his falsetto of his…”

Dad motioned no, please don’t. “Laurel.”

Too late. She clapped to create the simple tune. Others joined. Varric, Rylen, the Iron Bull, Blackwall next to Inquisitor Ellana Lavellen, who though didn’t clap, watched Laurel with a curious expression.

“Come on Dad,” Laurel said. “Sing the full song.”

She clapped and he sang of Sherry, as if shocked his voice could still go that high, higher than Laurel’s even. He sang like Frankie Valli almost, like he came from the streets of Jersey—which was true, he was from Jersey and Italian like Frankie Valli even though he pretended like he was Nevarran here and Thedas. “Come on, come on,” Laurel sang in the background, along with “Sherry, Sherry baby,” deepening her voice and accompanying her father. She was the Four Seasons to his Frankie, not his Sherry even if she wore a red dress like the narrator asked Sherry to wear in the song. She was someone else, transformed as she always was. Dad used to sing it all the time when she was sad. They were an anomaly in Thedas, an anachronism in this medieval renaissance world, singing a song of a happier and simpler time when there wasn’t any war and only beautiful women.

Except it wasn’t so simple back then, was it? Not at all. Yet it wasn’t so when they had this song, when Laurel could pretend she was someone’s Sherry baby.

They clapped for her father liked they clapped for her the other day. No matter the world everyone understood the concept of a sweet girl. “It runs in the family,” Laurel heard Varric say, Dad blushing and asking for another tankard of mead, and though Cullen didn’t clap from his lone and solitary table—and he was the only one who didn’t besides Maryden—he didn’t look like he had a stick up his ass like he usually did.

He didn’t clap until he did, looking right at her. He even looked less angry than usual.

She looked at her father after, the two saying whatever couldn’t be said earlier, other than the simple, true fact that Laurel was staying in Thedas.

Her father smiled. “You’re not as cynical perhaps as I thought.”

She shrugged, taking her tankard of mead and sipping. “Wait, would you? I still have more songs far deeper in philosophy than that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The quote Castelli tells Cullen is from Hamlet, and the "elven woman" is Merrill, he came through her Eluvian :)  
> Hope some of you guys like Frankie Valli as much as I do :)


	6. Splish Splash

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title comes from the song "Splish Splash, I was taking a bath"

She cast a spell on herself.

She wasn’t a mage in this world but she knew spells in the form of songs. So, she enveloped herself in this new persona of songstress and bard, not fully realizing that was what she was doing till she sang “Tulsa Queen” one night. She came back again the next night after singing the song, one of the soldiers asking for another song from “the queen from Tulsa.” She wore the title with careless, easy pride. Oklahomans didn’t get much fanfare outside of Oklahoma! and recently Emmylou Harris’ song. She’d take it.

She wanted to stay.

Life brought her to Thedas on the way out of Tulsa. Had she not been captured by a green light and zapped to Thedas, she probably would have just done the same thing she had been doing in Los Angeles, singing at clubs and finding gigs at weddings while busting her ass to leave Michael’s apartment. Here she was a discoverer and explorer, something greater than what she was. Her father was also there.

He had to leave for the Western Approach with Rylen and a few other officers soon after they sang “Sherry.” He wanted to better reacquaint, but as what they lost wasn’t a mere night, Laurel said they should not fully reacquaint during one night or even weeks. If she was staying, and she was, they had time.

In the upper courtyard, he offered a gift the night before he left. It was one of the few things he had in his possession when he fell through the mirror. It was a worn book, yet still gilded and bound.  
“You carried the complete works of Shakespeare with you?” Laurel asked. “Wow. Nerdy and sentimental.” It reminded her of something she’d do.

The plays kept him company many a lonely night, both in this world and the one he left behind. Laurel knew the stories. Back during the war, Dad was King Henry in his platoon’s hastily thrown together production of _Henry V_. He could still quote Henry’s speeches from France to Thedas, like he still remembered the lyrics to “Sherry.”

“They’re going to ask me to sing I’m afraid,” Dad said, crossing his arms. “Shit. What did I get myself into?”

“Sing for them then,” Laurel said with a laugh. “You’re not so much of a cynic.”

“Neither are you. Why else would you want to stay here?”

She said “academics,” though he thought there was something more. They hugged at least before they parted ways, promising he’d write. Laurel understood he wanted to do more, felt he should do more. She wasn’t sure what they could do other than to just live their lives and see where it led.

Her life was mostly in the tavern.

Days and then weeks into Thedas, Laurel fell into her routine. She ate with Josephine sometimes where she vented about the nobility, took walks and read more history. Every morning in her room she sang to herself her favorite songs. Beach Boys, Beatles, The Mamas and the Pappas, Dolly Parton, Elvis Presley, everyone. She wrote them down, blessing the good memory her dad gave her. They all were the songs she used to sing to a world that knew them already. She vowed to share them with this new world that didn’t know but could know by her voice. They were willing learners every night that passed and she brought them a new song. None were a great master’s aria, but serviceable renditions. With time she could offer the most beautiful renditions of what she knew, even learn the other songs of this world.

In the moment though they didn’t want any of the old songs. Maryden cast her dirty looks when they asked for Laurel, but batting her eyelashes Laurel sang when they asked. They wanted the new, though Laurel stayed true to her plans and offered them one song per night. She left them wanting more, because it was better to leave them wanting more than satisfy fully. Always she took the long way home so no admirer would know where she slept. She had admirers, the blonde elf, the man with the ruddy complexion, the templar whose name Laurel forgot. Every night she scanned the faces, catching them during the day during their duties when she milled about Skyhold. There was one she didn’t see.

Not since “Sherry” did Laurel see Cullen in the tavern. In fact she hadn’t seen Cullen much at all. At least not until she happened to pass by him outside the door to Josephine’s office one afternoon.

“You said this was a big fortress,” she said to him, eyeing him up and down. “Thought I wouldn’t have to see you.”

“Apologies my lady.”

Such decorum with no hint of annoyance. Neither mentioned the incident in the tavern, and as awkward seconds ticked by, Laurel decided the quiet was too palpable asked why he called her “my lady” when she used to be “the bard.”

“You’re the daughter of one of my senior officers. It is custom,” he replied, “And again, I apologize for the inconvenience of vexing you with my presence.”

“Well you won’t be too annoying for a bit. I’m off to Val Royeaux with Josephine.”

The Inquisitor mentioned she’d have to meet Josephine in Val Royeaux for business, and the ambassador kindly offered if Laurel would like to see the city. “Truly?” Cullen asked after she explained. “Your admirers will miss you.”

He knew she had admirers. Interesting. “Leaving them wanting more and waiting is a good tactic,” she said. “You know, letting them hunger until they just can’t stand it. Drawing the moment out, playing a game, dancing a dance. You know.”

“No. I don’t dance.”

“Ah. Well. Neither do I.”

Such oddity, he said. She was a bard.

“Singing is separate from dancing. And I don’t dance.”

“Oh.”

His amber eyes swept over her form. “Oh,” he said, as if made some great discovery. “Oh,” he said, as if he wanted to pick Laurel up again and make her dance.

He wouldn’t dare. Not unless she asked nicely.

“That’s too bad,” he said, before wishing her “good day,”

Once Laurel was in Josephine’s office, she asked her what she thought of the Commander.

“I think he’s brave and competent,” she replied, “though I do wish he would handle some situations more delicately. Particularly with nobles. He can be rather direct. Some like it though. He has many admirers.”

“He doesn’t strike me as someone who can wear a mask,” Laurel said, thinking of it.

“Do you like him Lady Laurel? Why do you ask?”

“Just curious.”

Josephine raised her eyebrows, smiling. “You didn’t answer the question. Is he in your good books?”

“He’s not in any of my books. If he was I’d burn my library.”

“Oh?” She wore an impish look. “You didn’t seem to mind him carrying you across Skyhold.”

She sighed. “Alright. Point taken. Maybe he’s not so bad. A puzzle. Reminds me a bit of Robert Redford in looks and attitude—oh you don’t know who that is. We’ll he’s someone famous from where I’m from. Suave and looks like he has a lot on his mind all the time.”

“Attractive?”

A few years ago, Laurel saw _The Way We Were_. She still thought of the scene where Barbara Streisand climbed into bed with Robert Redford.

She snickered. “Yes.”

Josephine’s brow quirked. “Well. The Commander is—”

“Blonde like Robert. Sure.”

“Well, and—”

“You know,” Laurel said, heart making unnecessary pitter patters. “Why did you want to see me?”

“Oh, merely I wanted to know if you were packed for the trip.”

The smile didn’t quite leave Josephine’s lips, but Laurel assured she packed the few clothes she had.

“In Val Royeaux we can stop at the tailor’s,” Josephine suggested. “A bard has many weapons. Her outfits and shoes one of them.”

Laurel looked down at her old leather boots. They were sturdy and warm, but undecorative. Boring.

She mourned. Such a silly thing to mourn for, but she did.

“I miss my go go boots,” she said.

“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Josephine admitted. “However, I think you’ll find many things of interest in Val Royeaux.”

* * *

They traveled by carriage. They rolled through hills and plains, a carriage far bumpier than a smooth car, though the sights outside the small window far more enjoyable. Laurel saw mountains and valleys before they even made it to Val Royeaux, Josephine exclaiming she was an excitable passenger.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Laurel said. “Where I’m from there’s roads with mechanical cars and tall buildings. It’s like Little House on the Prairie, and—”

But she shut up, because Josephine had a far different point of reference than Laurel.

The trip required two days’ worth of travel, so at the end of the first day, they stayed at an inn in the city of Val Chevin. Josephine retired early, though Laurel stayed up to people watch. She’d seen a few Orlesians at Skyhold, all masked nobles in silken finery, though no one in the tavern wore masks. Commoners, Laurel assumed, and she assumed as well that was why they were all kinder, listening and clapping politely to the singing bard. She sung in the language Laurel knew as French. Perhaps she should have been grateful it was a language she could recognize.

“What’s your name?” the barkeep asked when Laurel ordered a bottle of Orlesian red for herself, for no other reason at all then she could.

“Rhiannon,” she answered, feeling saucy, spicy, and a bit witchy. “I’m with the Inquisition. We’re restoring order.”

“What sorts of order?”

“Oh you know, demons falling from the sky. Who’s doing anything about that? No one but us. Consider joining we’re a swell bunch.”

It wasn’t the last epithet she gave out during the trip. She called Josephine a lady of the canyon on the way to Val Royeaux, magical in her own right and the true power of the Inquisition. Joni Mitchell was stuck Laurel’s her mind at the time, a writer and singer and even bard who wrote some of her best work in the area known as Laurel Canyon in LA. When Laurel was a child her dad drove her through the Canyon on their trip to California, Laurel thinking it was named after her. She sang “Ladies of the Canyon” for Josephine from one of her favorite records, thinking someone with more talent at least should write a song explicitly for the lady Ambassador—Leliana too. Ladies of the Inquisition, perhaps.

Josephine blushed at the compliments and assertions Laurel gave that she was the true might of the Inquisition. Cullen and Leliana were of also of great importance she said, and if it weren’t for Ellana they wouldn’t have even found Skyhold.

“But words are powerful here,” Laurel said. “Your influence brings money, which brings troops, which brings information.”

“Are words important where you are from, Lady Laurel?”

To some, she replied. To her.

“I know your father is one of Cullen’s officers, but surely a woman such as yourself would have options.”

“I could say the same for you,” Laurel said. “But we’re here, aren’t we? We can make it mean something.”

“A fine goal,” Josephine said, smiling. “Let us then.”

They arrived at the capitol before the Inquisitor. Josephine decided to take Laurel shopping. Laurel didn’t understand Thedosian currency but Josephine peeked through Laurel’s coin purse and smirked. She acquired a bit of tips from her singing apparently, and she could buy at least twenty new outfits if she wanted. Laurel didn’t buy twenty but quite a few—breeches and skirts and dresses, billowy peasant tops and glittered shoes along with practical boots, though no go go boots or something like them. Some time ago she saw _Camelot_ in the theatre with Vanessa Redgrave and Richard Harris. Such costume envy she once had as she watched. Such costume envy, fulfilled. Though it had setbacks like no toilets' (though there was running water in some parts), Thedas had perks. An excuse to wear a medieval costumes that wasn’t Halloween was one of them. At last, she was given the colors to paint the ultimate expression of her truest self.

“I never liked the plaid shirts or boxy dresses that were popular where I’m from,” Laurel said in a new red dress with a square neckline—a dress she’d save for a special occasion. She felt a beautiful Juliet in this dress, a sweet victory after being cast as the nurse in her high school production of the play.

“What monstrosity is that?” The shopkeeper, Madam Bouchard asked. “What is this plaid you speak of you? And a boxy dress? You’d hide that figure?”

Laure shrugged. “It was what the people in charge said was fashionable.”

Madam Bouchard huffed, taking off her wire glasses. “I would have revolted.”

Laurel looked at herself in the mirror. The dress had many petticoats, but showed off the dip in her hips, the sleeves long ad billowy. Her hair tumbled from the coiffure she pinned, her curtain bangs getting longer on both sides of her face, framing it. She’d lost some weight since coming through the rift—her brown almond shaped eyes popped against her heart shaped face, apple cheeks popping.

“Beautiful,” Josephine said.

Laurel bat her eyelashes. “A bard has many weapons.”

The copious shopping bags in the carriage, and Laurel wearing a new billowy white top with long, gathered red skirt, they met the Inquisitor in the square. While Josephine and the Inquisitor’s party met her contact, Laurel explored the city by herself. Modern woman out of time, who lived through matte colored cynicism, disco and yellows and red now hovered through medieval, renaissance, baroque, and now French court Marie Antoinette-ish splendor. Truly. Laurel didn’t know how else to describe Thedas as anything other than an imaginative conglomeration of aesthetics. Roaming, she stood near the open café, listening to idle chatter in French Orlesian accents. How connected was this world to hers, how were there similarities? How did Thedosians even know the language she knew as English?

Such considerations, such philosophy. And as she considered, a masked man asked her to sit with him, asking where she was from. He’d never seen her before in the city. “I prefer standing,” Laurel replied when he asked again if they would sit.

Stand they did. As he chatted about the city, or rather, as he chatted, his blue eyes peeked at her through the mask of beaten gold. Shit, she thought. Do they just know I’m lined with something otherworldly here? Ahe considered again the logistics and the practicality, her power as a woman out of her own time. It was really fucking cool.

She even giggled, and her visitor asked why.

“I’m here,” Laurel said, elated. “It’s cool is all.”

He never heard such word, “cool” used in such context. It delighted him, cool. “Why are you here?” he asked unbidden after trying the word out so more.

“Magic,” she said, before clarifying, “the Inquisition.” When she fell through the rift, she told Cullen she came from away. Now…

She supposed it was true enough. She did live at the headquarters for the mighty Inquisition.

Her guest did not like that. “Ah, the Inquisition,” he spat. “Only a trifle of a thing, run by an elf. A—”

“The Inquisition is restoring order,” Laurel said, offended on behalf of Josephine, her father, Ellana, Cullen even. Man worked hard, ass he was.

He stared, wide eyed at her. She didn’t mean to raise her voice, but she did and she wouldn’t take it back. Still, she smoothed her hair back, regained herself. She remembered what Josephine said of Orlais not too long ago, how overall chatter gathered from Leliana’s little birds indicated “unfavorable winds” in Orlais. It was one reason they couldn’t secure an invitation to an important ball.

Laurel talked with Varric and read books. She knew the truth about those stupid little masks.

“Sitting here,” Laurel said, chatting with pretty women in your gilded cage, while soldiers die in the plains. The Inquisitor, an elf who should have no desire to help you lot, did. Careful where you throw accusations fool. Enjoy your finery and pretend others aren’t suffering.”

She left his side, not realizing she drew a crowd until she felt the eyes burn behind her. Turning around, she waved at her crowd of onlookers.

“Who are you?” One of them asked in the front.

Laurel, not a witch in this world, but a witch in another way, said her name was Rhiannon. It was the first name that popped into her head. It was the name heard round the city.

* * *

Cullen counted the pass of days. It was a habit he carried from Kirkwall, lest the days not blur together. The truth was, they could have if he let them. Often however, especially in Kirkwall, he wondered what the point was. He knew even with his small morning ritual he was more automaton than man, lifeless behind his eyes. He didn’t look at his reflection often, back then or now— only to shave and trim his hair when it got too long. But right along with the changing months of the calendar, he counted the passage of days by way of the dark circles that once lined his eyes. They were still there, though the passing weeks made lilac the once dark mauve. That was a victory, he supposed. He’d take small victories.

The Inquisitor, Hawke, and the Warden contact Stroud sent word back to Skyhold: the Wardens were gathering at Adamant. At her behest Cullen ordered the steady stream of soldiers and siege equipment toward the fortress. If the Inquisitor heeded his advice he’d begin marching with his men to Adamant immediately. Begrudgingly, he agreed to wait till she came back, wait until she delivered the order herself. It didn’t stop him from once again announcing his disapproval in the war room however. With the Inquisitor still on her way back to Skyhold, Cullen didn’t quite hold his tongue.

“My scouts in the area will keep us informed,” Leliana said, and at least she kept her tone neutral.

His thoughts admittedly drifted (his soldiers needed new equipment themselves) before Josephine brought forward her messages and missives. It seemed of little consequence at first. A woman named Rhiannon made a scene in the Val Royeaux square, Josephine said. Not uncommon to Cullen. Orlesians were known for that. However, the woman, Rhiannon, defended the might of the Inquisition with gusto and pride. Since then, word of the Inquisition turned more favorable in the city.

“Just like that?” Cullen asked. “One woman spoke well of us, and then…”

“It’s the power of a pretty woman with a pretty voice,” Leliana said.

“Lady Laurel was quite feisty really to Lord Courcillian,” Josephine said. “Penelope Jervais was there and she appreciated the display. She said she was right to critique, and—”

“Wait.” Cullen looked up from the map. “Lady Laurel?”

“Oh yes,” Josephine said with a smile. “Rhiannon is Lady Laurel.”

Cullen raised his brow. Another name for the bard. Apparently she didn’t have enough already. Laurel Castelli, the Tulsa Queen as they called her in the tavern, his men in the barracks singing her praises after the drills, now Rhiannon. He asked why such need for the name, and Josephine merely replied it was common for a bard to take many names.

“But she never went to bard school,” Cullen pointed out.

Leliana trusted her, she said. “Besides, I have an idea for her as well.”

He didn’t like the sound of that. “What sort of idea?”

Leliana confirmed his suspicions. “One you won’t like.”

He didn’t, but a march to Adamant with his infantry wouldn’t have been pleasant no matter whose company he was with. At any rate, perhaps the bard wouldn’t want to march with the troops across Orlais to “sing a few songs for the troops, stop at a few villages and spread the word of the Inquisition to increase influence.” He thought she rather liked her post at the tavern, singing one song per night before bidding her adoring crowd a goodnight. He remembered that song she sang about Sherry or whatever the woman’s name was in the song. Cullen wasn’t so stubborn to admit he thought both she and Castelli did a marvelous job. All those years he knew Anthony Castelli and he never heard him sing so high. Truly impressive.

The daughter was just as impressive, finding a way to take the centerstage even if she didn’t sing the bulk of the lyrics. She may have said she didn’t dance but she shook her hips well enough. She made music from nothing but the clapping to the rhythm, heard something only in her head but managed to share it with all who listened. Cullen clapped for her that night. She deserved it. Yet she looked at him after like he spilled ale on her clothes.

Maybe she was merely surprised. He told her he didn’t go to the tavern until he did—but only at Castelli’s prompting. Only because he wanted moral support to see his daughter once more. That was all. Had he known she’d greet him so coldly he’d perhaps remain outside.

Don’t think about her, Cullen told himself, changing up in his room late in the night after training. He wearied himself even without a sparring partner, his body covered in sweat. But if he was to march to Adamant, he needed to be sharp, focused. He was sloppy last he fought near the rift. He could have fallen had Rylen not been there. He wouldn’t let himself fall.

He usually slept only in his smallclothes, and truthfully he considered just climbing in his and trying to sleep. He was however, profusely perspired. _Unhygienic Cullen,_ his mother used to tell him when he tried going to bed prior to bathing. It was unholy back then as well to bathe, to bring water from outside and dump it in the washing basin. At Kinloch and Kirkwall it was marginally better, though only marginally as the bathing quarters were shared. Cullen was always quick to wash and then be off. When it came to Skyhold however, he knew a secret.

He knew a secret washing room toward the south side of the fortress that even had running water. Few ventured there, and indeed Cullen had only a handful of soldiers patrol the area as well. It was the part of Skyhold carved against the mountains. Coryphaeus would not storm Skyhold that way. Usually he was utilitarian in his washing habits, washing quickly before getting it done, and usually he did it early morning in the downstairs washing room. Perhaps if he sat in the basin for a while and mulled, he could ignore the feel of cold iron in his throat.

He clenched his fist. It hadn’t been too bad for a while there.

With extra clothes, he settled in the large and secret washing room. Cullen stripped, turning on the faucet. He sat the edge, letting the water heat. Need new equipment, Rylen should send a letter, will the Inquisitor let me…does she trust me yet?

He was lost in his thoughts. So he swore, he did not hear her. He could get too caught up in his own head, his own thoughts. He always knew it. And with the running water how could he hear her humming, her opening the door? How could he hear her until she shrieked?

“You!” She shouted, standing in the doorway. “What—”

He was too slow to react and he rose first—a mistake as he should have perhaps grabbed a towel to cover himself, but the towel was on the other side of the room. So he used his hands. But his fogged, panicked mind didn’t think of the ramifications of grabbing it until she shouted, “don’t grab it!”

He reached for a towel and haphazardly covered his waist before gathering his clothes, avoiding her gaze as he scrambled out. Halfway out, his towel fell off. He cursed, but he didn’t rush. He lost the battle. Instead, he did what he should have done from the start, scramble back in his breeches, pulling them over and securing them.

He turned around. The bard stood, her back against the door. She wore a bemused, but strangely satisfied look he didn’t see her wear when he clapped for her in the tavern. If this was what it took to see her smile…

“Commander,” she said, still smiling, “Cullen. I didn’t know you liked to use this washing room. Perhaps we should develop a schedule.”

He stood straight, promised he wouldn’t waiver. “Yes.”

“So sorry for the inconvenience I didn’t hear the water.”

“Yes,” he muttered. “I’m sure.”

“I can wash tomorrow morning.”

All that and she left. All that and all she offered was a smirk when she turned around to look at him once more. And when he told her at least she could apologize—he did a thousand times—she did no such thing.

“I’m sorry if I embarrassed you,” she said. “

"Not sorry you saw?"

"Only if you want me to be."

He considered. "I'll leave it up to you."

He wondered which part of him she wasn’t sorry to see when he at last got his bath.

**Author's Note:**

> Come follow me on tumblr:https://a-shakespearean-in-paris.tumblr.com/ or twitter: https://twitter.com/baguette_me_not


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